THE SISTERS AND THE UNDERTAKER’S SON: A NOVEL MANUSCRIPT WITH A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION By TARA NICOLE HEMBROUGH Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, Spanish Evangel University Springfield, Missouri 1995 Master of Arts in English Western Illinois University Macomb, Illinois 1998 Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Texas State University San Marcos, Texas 2001 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December, 2010 ii THE SISTERS AND THE UNDERTAKER’S SON: A NOVEL MANUSCRIPT WITH A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION Dissertation Approved: Toni Graham Dissertation Adviser Dr. Elizabeth Grubgeld Dr. Jeffrey Walker Dr. Brad Bays Dr. Mark E. Payton Dean of the Graduate College ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Toni Graham. I also wish to show my appreciation for the other members of my advisory committee: Dr. Jeffrey Walker, Dr. Elizabeth Grubgeld, and Dr. Brad Bays. In addition, I want to acknowledge others who have read my novel and given me commentary, particularly Andrea Koenig, Jason Roberts, Brad McLelland, Bill D’Arezzo, Louis Sylvester, James Brubaker, and Karen Sisk. Finally, I want to thank others who have helped me in the past in my general writing efforts: Tim O’Brien, Debra Monroe, Tom Grimes, Dagoberto Gilb, and Rick De Marinis. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................1 II. CHAPTER 1 ............................................................................................................29 III. CHAPTER 2 ..........................................................................................................47 IV. CHAPTER 3 ..........................................................................................................62 V. CHAPTER 4 ..........................................................................................................85 VI. CHAPTER 5 ........................................................................................................113 VII. CHAPTER 6 .......................................................................................................134 VIII. CHAPTER 7 .....................................................................................................155 IX. CHAPTER 8 ........................................................................................................160 X. CHAPTER 9 .........................................................................................................195 XI. CHAPTER 10 ......................................................................................................215 XII. CHAPTER 11 .....................................................................................................232 XIII. CHAPTER 12 ...................................................................................................257 XIV. CHAPTER 13 ...................................................................................................270 REFERENCES ..........................................................................................................292 1 INTRODUCTION James Baldwin, in his Preface to Notes of a Native Son , wrote, “We write to give order and structure to a chaotic world” (7). Perhaps the only real way to make meaning out of the chaos of life is to create it, to forge cause-and-effect relationships in an otherwise blind and unstructured universe. As a means for creation, the novel is my craft of choice. Many writers propose that the invention of one’s own world allows for the building of a great expanse, one of both breadth and width, and for the novel’s general ability to provide largesse, I have always been drawn to its form. My history of writing illustrates my proclivity toward fullness and depth of picture. In the past, I have had difficulty writing stories within the span of less than a month, a timeframe some short story writers believe is a general allocation for composing a good draft. In addition, I prefer not to pen tales shorter than thirty pages. When I was twenty, I wrote a ninety-page novella in my time of transition between composing short stories and novels. For the next eight years, I concentrated on writing a series of novels and learned the general process. Then, within the past six years at Oklahoma State University, I wrote “The Sisters and the Undertaker’s Son.” When asked by peers about my reason for its composition, I said I wanted to write this novel before I could “forget” what it was like to be a teenager, even if I had to look back at those ever more distant years from an adult’s perspective. In 2 writing “The Sisters,” I also aimed to show the isolation many teenagers feel, their contradictory wishes to both die and be immortal, and their need simply to feel important. Difficulties in writing a finished, polished novel for the first time aside, I chose this particular form for my dissertation in order to have the opportunity to show my protagonist, fifteen-year-old Shine, and her existence both more fully and with a more gradual process of unfolding than I could have done in a short story. In fact, Charles May, a theorist in narratology, writes the novel is the place for “the accumulation of metonymic detail and the development of self through time” (65). With the novel form, in contrast to the rule of many short stories, I am not confined to showing an isolated problem in my protagonist’s life or relaying a single day’s happenings. Instead, I can display the minute build-up of events leading Shine to turn stumblingly but finally to an alternate reality and the violence this reality invokes. In the end, Shine moves toward her tragic fate since she cannot locate any modus operandi to make others affirm her attributes, place in the family, and dreams. In writing “The Sisters,” I also wanted to explore possible circumstances that could lead young people to feel as if they were forced to engage in violent, out-of- bounds, and even bizarre behavior, despite the possibly foreseeable and perhaps deadly consequences. Around 1998, a friend gave me a newspaper article concerning three teens, a boy and two girls, in Florida, who called themselves “vampires” and had, in line with this identity, killed an elderly woman and attacked a handful of other unfortunate locals. The reporter who covered the story addressed many of the same questions I myself would ask upon becoming immersed in the account. We both seemed to wonder about the teenagers’ psychological profiles and especially whether they had any so-called genetic predispositions toward violence, the teens’ access to nurturing role models, the juveniles’ 1 socio-economic backgrounds, and the teens’ overall mindset and possible intents in committing the murders. My curiosity about the Florida teens’ crime eventually led me to imagine vampirism as a possible role for a young individual who felt she had been cast out of the circle by an uncaring society to take on. Previously, I had also been interested in the Columbine shootings and possible causes that could have triggered two Colorado boys to attack their high school peers as an act of revenge for being ignored. With such instances of so-called or so-depicted “deranged” teenagers in the media in mind, I sat down at my desk. Rather than pen a Romantic novel about “creatures,” as did Mary Shelley, a gothic novel about the undead, as did Bram Stoker, or even a fantasy novel about “real” vampires, as had Anne Rice, I decided, with The Sisters , to explore the strange but then again perhaps not so surprising behavior, under the circumstances, of someone from a rather ordinary world who lets herself become a victim, if not of her own society, of her own mind’s machinations. I set out to explore evil not as a tangible, physically embodied force as in Dracula and its character, the count, but as a humanly constructed and perhaps even so indefinable concept. During my composition process, I avoided vampire and gothic literature and films in an attempt to avoid stereotypes and make my character, Shine, as unique as possible. I abstained from reading this literature and viewing these films because I felt as if it was hard enough as it was to avoid the clichés about vampires and to put a new spin on the popular theme of the oppression caused by organized religion, with its otherworldly and polarized factions led by God and Satan. Among those “true” examples of vampires, however, I did choose to include a reference to the Romanian medieval figure of Countess Elizabeth Bathory in my novel. For most readers, 2 Bathory may represent a lesser known figure in vampire lore. She is also, conversely, the person who most resembles Shine, so I made limited use of Bathory, even as I changed elements of surrounding legends and limited mention of her to one scene. Together then, the Florida vampires, Colorado teens, and European noble acted as instigating agents for my novel’s conception. If I could categorize my writing style according to genre, I would place it in a new genre I call for my purposes “Midwestern gothic.” Besides relying on contemporary and historical examples of “vampires” on which I could base my protagonist Shine, I found Edgar Allen Poe to be an inspiration for my novel with regard to its subject and tone. This influence should come as no surprise: When I was in elementary school, he represented my favorite writer. In fact, the physical appearances and personalities