Date of Award

2006

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts in Writing

Department

Creative Writing

First Advisor

Michael Castro

Second Advisor

Beth Mead

Abstract

Faith is the belief in something larger than oneself. It is not provable; it is not necessarily logical. It is a feeling, an intuition. Faith can be a belief in a god or a set of ideals, but the important part is the believing. If a person is without faith, that person is lost and remains so until such time a belief is born again.

TI1is culminating project strives to look at faith through essay and short fiction. A preface essay speaks to what I think faith is and why every human being requires it. The introduction has three purposes. First, it introduces me and tells how I lost my faith in writing. Second, it discusses the authors who have influenced my writing. Third, it discusses each story in this collection and their connections to the theme.

The body of this project is made up of four pieces of short fiction, each tackling a facet of faith. The first, "Wrong Side Up," tells of a man whose faith is so strong even natural disaster and family tragedy doesn't break his belief. "The Meek One" is a story about a young man who creates a false-faith and his eventual fall from grace. The third piece, "Death and Life," is about a tragedy that makes a man lose all faith and his spiral down to a personal hell, until he is able to save himself. The last story of the collection, "To Have Faith is to be a Mockingbird." addresses the question of what happens to a man who has no faith, yet everyone he cares about has complete faith in a gift he doesn't believe he possesses. His need for understanding sends him on a quest to save his sister and maybe himself.

Download

Share

COinS