Heartland

• Main Author: Krysler, Gary
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 1991
• Subjects: Fundamentalism
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=60627

The thesis is a short novel, HeartLand, followed by a critical afterword. === The events of the novel constitute a reconstruction of the first-person narrator's past. Jeffrey Adam Wood is seven years old when he is orphaned and taken to live with his three spinster aunts, who are sectarian fundamentalist Christians of peculiar stripe. Juxtaposed to Jeffrey's episodic recollections are 'dreams' he invents and imposes on his aunts as a kind of apocalyptic and cathartic revenge. Thematically, HeartLand is a contemplation of how time alters memory, belief, and individual identity. === The required critical afterword is in two parts. The first provides a background to fundamentalism, with an emphasis on how American culture influenced its development. The second considers how, in literature, cultural forces encroach upon even the most sectarian individuals; this is done by focusing primarily, and briefly, on Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.