A Country Of Giants
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis, A Country of Giants, consists of four short stories which explore the borderland between youthful innocence and adult understanding. This borderland is often considered in "coming of age" tales, a literary genre that investigates the growth of youthful characters. Through my four stories I examine themes including a loss of innocence, claiming one's identity, independence, and sexual understanding. In addition to those themes I present situations where adults lose their experiential understanding, digressing into a more innocent and uninformed state. I tend to write realistic stories, and it is my hope this use of realism develops well-rounded characters that a reader can sympathize with, involving those readers with my stories. I also write with a stylized language. Due to my character's' inability to name the situations and experiences they are encountering, my heavy use of metaphor and simile--as well as disjointed sentence structure--renders this lack of understanding as accurately and as vividly as possible. Lastly, in addition to my stories I include an introduction to my thesis discussing the influence of other writers, including their particular themes and writing styles, which places my own work within an established literary tradition.
abstract: This thesis, A Country of Giants, consists of four short stories which explore the borderland between youthful innocence and adult understanding. This borderland is often considered in "coming of age" tales, a literary genre that investigates the growth of youthful characters. Through my four stories I examine themes including a loss of innocence, claiming one's identity, independence, and sexual understanding. In addition to those themes I present situations where adults lose their experiential understanding, digressing into a more innocent and uninformed state. I tend to write realistic stories, and it is my hope this use of realism develops well-rounded characters that a reader can sympathize with, involving those readers with my stories. I also write with a stylized language. Due to my character's' inability to name the situations and experiences they are encountering, my heavy use of metaphor and simile--as well as disjointed sentence structure--renders this lack of understanding as accurately and as vividly as possible. Lastly, in addition to my stories I include an introduction to my thesis discussing the influence of other writers, including their particular themes and writing styles, which places my own work within an established literary tradition.
author: Greenlee, Benjamin Mace
keywords: coming of age, creative writing, language, metaphor, short story, well-rounded characters
date published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:26:24Z
provider: University of North Dakota
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of North Dakota