Keywords

Novel, fiction, disabilities, developmental disabilities

Abstract

The Never-Knowns is a novel about a high-intensity behavioral group home for adults with severe to profound developmental disabilities, its residents, and the staff who are employed there. Focusing on plural protagonists, no single narrative is ever fully realized or resolved, leaving only a cryptic aggregate of experiences, revelations, and trauma. In a typical suburban neighborhood, much like any of us grew up in or now live, there is a house down the block that no one discusses openly. This house seems like all the rest, well landscaped and tidy. Although three times a day much coming and going of college-aged kids and ne’er-do-wells whispers of something covert, obscure. This house is many things to many people; a workplace, or home, or burden, or profit, or prison. An unfortunate, absurd one-act play echoes infinitely for those kept here. Constance is a thirty-something disabled woman who wakes every morning by sprinting nude in a wondrous fury toward the first person or thing she can destroy. Malcolm is a new staff member who snorts meth and masturbates in his car during shift breaks. Terry is a twenty-five year old deaf mute who believes his clothes dresser is God and always knows exactly how many feet are between him and every other place he’d rather be. Jake is a veteran staff member who has finalized his plans to take all the residents of the house deep into a forest and abandon them. Using disjointed, prolix, and often dissonant approaches to storytelling, The NeverKnowns seeks to convey the perspectives of developmentally disabled individuals who possess few or no language skills, and who are so far detached from their own existence that their iv understanding and interaction with the world is simultaneously grotesque, beautiful, and confounding

Notes

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Graduation Date

2013

Semester

Summer

Advisor

Marinara, Martha

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

English

Degree Program

Creative Writing

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004861

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004861

Language

English

Release Date

August 2013

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Arts and Humanities -- Dissertations, Academic, Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Humanities

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