Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Paradise Tossed: A Yuppie Creation Myth. (Original stories);
Abstract
Paradise Tossed: A Yuppie Creation Myth is a work of fiction. The genre is myth, and the viewpoint is distinctly feminine. All the writing in the eight traditional short stories and seventeen poems is distinguished by its accessibility to the reader. The myth traces the journey of a female avatar who takes form in several female representatives at various stages in a symbolic night-sea journey sometimes associated with creation myth. The progression is from a pre-mortal innocence, to an attempted return to nature and innocence characteristic of the 1960's hippies who were part of the back-to-the-land movement. The avatar then seeks fulfillment in the pursuit of material wealth. Disillusionment follows her attempt to return to the innocence of childhood. The various avatars are delineated as distinct individuals; their situations and the men with whom they are linked are variations on similar themes. The stories dramatize the complexities of male-female relationships under the duress of the modern inevitabilities of war and materialism, and the dissolution of traditional values governing those relationships. The form is myth, but the characters and the situations are grounded in reality. Tone ranges from lyricism in the beginning to cynicism in the middle of the work, and it ends in hope. Paradise Tossed winds down into a sense of mystery and awe. The reader will find that all the pieces are connected, not in a sequential way as in the chapters of a novel, but in recurring motifs. The symbols of the nuclear bomb, barrenness, darkness, and natural unrest are set in contrast to a peaceful cosmos, water, sunlight, animal life, flowers, and the characters themselves.
Subject Area
Literature|Womens studies|American studies
Recommended Citation
Murphy, Patricia Marie, "Paradise Tossed: A Yuppie Creation Myth. (Original stories);" (1987). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8803762.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8803762