'The Assault on Mount B' by Rod Fee 1/129
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‘The Assault on Mount B’ by Rod Fee 1/129 Rod Fee ID:0826790 ‘The Assault on Mount B: understanding the role of story in self-delusion in our personal histories.’ A thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 2015 Faculty: Applied Humanities School: Languages and Social Sciences Primary Supervisor: Dr Paul Mountfort Secondary Supervisor: Dr Maria O’Connor ‘The Assault on Mount B’ by Rod Fee 2/129 ATTESTATION OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning. R H Fee ‘The Assault on Mount B’ by Rod Fee 3/129 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I acknowledge the assistance of: 1. My two supervisors Dr Paul Mountfort and Dr Maria O’Connor, and Associate Professor Mark Jackson mentor supervisor, all of AUT University ‘The Assault on Mount B’ by Rod Fee 4/129 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS 1. All intellectual property including copyright, is retained by the candidate in the content of the candidate’s thesis. For the removal of doubt, publication by the candidate of this or any derivative work does not change the intellectual property rights of the candidate in relation to the thesis. 2. I confirm that my thesis does not contain plagiarised material or material for which the copyright or other intellectual property belongs to a third party. ‘The Assault on Mount B’ by Rod Fee 5/129 CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL 1. The content of the candidate’s thesis is confidential for commercial reasons, that is, the possible publication by the candidate of the thesis or a derivative of it, in part or in whole, as a work of creative fiction for sale. 2. This confidentiality remains until after any commercial publication. 3. For the removal of doubt, publication does not change the intellectual property rights of the candidate of this or any derivative work. ‘The Assault on Mount B’ by Rod Fee 6/129 ABSTRACT This research consists of a creative writing component, a novel, accompanied by an exegesis. The Assault on Mount B examines consciousness through an experimental exploration in creative writing. It uses synchronous but disjunctive multi-tracking, genre-bending forking pathways across multiple literary modes, avenues of comprehension, delusion, and memory and a blank canvas denouement. It interrogate states of delusion in everyday life and asks how and why human beings create revisionist meaning out of their lived experience by creating patterns of story and attempts to provide insights into the inevitable relationship that story has to our perception of reality. It adopts a framework of multiple simultaneous narratives within a protagonist and explores the necessary incompleteness and resulting inevitable compromise in interpreting reality and the construction of the self. It explores these in both theme and in physical form with different voices, temporality and open text by setting up the relationship between two contemporaneous narrative layers within one person and a third layer being a collection of myths legends and fables written in a modern context representing both the protagonist’s underlying conscience and forms of rationalisation for his actions. Its research design is such that the reader is invited to make an inquiry into the three separate narratives exploring the distinction between what appears to have happened in the main character’s life and the different contemporaneous narratives which are constructed continuously within him but are not necessarily open to his conscious mind, ultimately suggesting that all of these perceptions and therefore the conscious self are versions of invented story. It examines the concept that we are an amalgam of such narratives, in effect Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster. The exegesis results from a continuous cycle of action and reflection during the construction of the creative work. Engagement with the critical literature relating to the allows reflection upon and adaptation of the creative work, while performing the creative work sparks more questions to be interrogated in terms of theory. The exegesis is therefore based on the same body of research that informs the CW exploring external or literary or cultural topics related at least implicitly to the CW. This dialogical movement comprises the methodology underlying the composition of both parts of my PhD. ‘The Assault on Mount B’ by Rod Fee 7/129 ‘The Assault on Mount B’ by Rod Fee 8/129 CONTENTS ATTESTATION OF AUTHORSHIP ............................................................................................ 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ 3 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS ........................................................................................ 4 CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL .................................................................................................... 5 ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... 6 CONTENTS .......................................................................................................................... 8 CREATIVE WORK - “THE ASSAULT ON MOUNT B.” ................................................................ 9 EXEGESIS ........................................................................................................................... 10 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 10 PART ONE – THE TWO CONTINUING NARRATIVE LAYERS (“THE ASSAULT ON MOUNT B” AND “THE MAP OF THE VENEER”) .............................................................................................. 17 NATURAL DELUSION..................................................................................................................... 21 1. The incompleteness of, inaccuracy of, and change to, memories ............................. 21 2. The inability to completely record all possible sensory data ..................................... 26 3. Rationalisation, cognitive dissonance and self-delusion ........................................... 29 CLINICAL DELUSION ..................................................................................................................... 31 4. Personal Clinical delusion .......................................................................................... 31 5. Mass psychoses – or transpersonal delusions ........................................................... 33 6. Confabulation ............................................................................................................ 34 7. Self-deception ............................................................................................................ 36 REPRESENTATIONS OF DELUSION IN OTHER CREATIVE WRITING ............................................................ 37 SETTINGS FOR THE TOP AND BOTTOM LAYER NARRATIVES ................................................................... 46 CHARACTERS .............................................................................................................................. 46 PART ONE – THE MIDDLE LAYER (“SUBURBAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS”) ............................... 49 8. Myths and legends ..................................................................................................... 59 9. Allegory ...................................................................................................................... 61 SETTINGS FOR THE MIDDLE LAYER STORIES ....................................................................................... 67 THE CONCEPT OF THE SELF AS AN AMALGAM OF STORIES .................................................. 67 PART TWO ........................................................................................................................ 83 PART THREE ...................................................................................................................... 85 PART FOUR ....................................................................................................................... 86 THE USE OF PHYSICAL LAYERS IN OTHER CREATIVE WORK .................................................. 87 CONSTRUCTING MEANING FROM THIS LAYERED WORK ..................................................... 91 THE LOGISTICS OF WRITING IN THREE LAYERS .................................................................. 108 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 114 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................... 119 ‘The Assault on Mount B’ by Rod Fee 9/129 CREATIVE WORK - “The Assault on Mount B.” The Creative Work follows (pages are separately numbered.) ‘The Assault on Mount B’ by Rod Fee 10/129 EXEGESIS Introduction Man – let me offer you a definition – is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker buoys and trail signs of stories. He has to keep on making them up.