Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Half-life : essays

Public Deposited

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/mw22v771m

Descriptions

Attribute NameValues
Creator
Abstract
  • Lauren Fath, in her non-fiction collection Half-Life: Essays, examines the underpinnings of her upbringing in suburban Fort Wayne, Indiana, focusing primarily on familial relationships and the importance of hindsight in understanding how our families make an imprint on our lives. By looking at our relationships through the lens offered by the present, Fath’s essays show, we are able to examine our lives with a “split consciousness” that differentiates between how things seemed at the time and how they, in fact, must have been. Fath employs this split consciousness as she explores a variety of autobiographical events in her life, from her parents’ tenuous relationship to her grandmother’s sewing lessons to travels abroad in Slovakia. Through hindsight, Fath asserts, she is able to gain a new view of these past events and interactions, and to recognize her own culpability in situations where she had previously placed blame elsewhere. Also driving Fath’s collection is a keen awareness of place and how it affects our interactions. The essays move through a series of locales—from Fort Wayne to San Francisco to Chicago, with a stop at Grandma’s along the way—as the author narrates her search for a place to call home and details the uncanny surroundings in which she grew up. These are essays about the poignance of memory, about the sharp pains of hindsight, and, ultimately, about how we make amends with our own past.
License
Resource Type
Date Available
Date Issued
Degree Level
Degree Name
Degree Field
Degree Grantor
Commencement Year
Advisor
Committee Member
Academic Affiliation
Non-Academic Affiliation
Subject
Rights Statement
Publisher
Peer Reviewed
Language
Replaces

Relationships

Parents:

This work has no parents.

In Collection:

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details lfath_thesis.pdf 2017-08-02 Public Download