The Thirty Kilometre Zone

University of Windsor Scholarship at UWindsor Electronic Theses and Dissertations Theses, Dissertations, and Major Papers 2008 The Thirty Kilometre Zone Sandra Chmara University of Windsor Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd Recommended Citation Chmara, Sandra, "The Thirty Kilometre Zone" (2008). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 8276. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/8276 This online database contains the full-text of PhD dissertations and Masters’ theses of University of Windsor students from 1954 forward. These documents are made available for personal study and research purposes only, in accordance with the Canadian Copyright Act and the Creative Commons license—CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works). Under this license, works must always be attributed to the copyright holder (original author), cannot be used for any commercial purposes, and may not be altered. 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THE THIRTY KILOMETRE ZONE by Sandra Chmara A Creative Writing Project Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies Through English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS At the University of Windsor Windsor, Ontario, Canada 2008 © 2008 Sandra Chmara Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-47079-4 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-47079-4 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada AUTHOR'S DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that I am the sole author of this thesis and that no part of this thesis has been published or submitted for publication. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge, my thesis does not infringe upon anyone's copyright nor violate any proprietary rights and that any ideas, techniques, quotations, or any other material from the work of other people included in my thesis, published or otherwise, are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices. Furthermore, to the extent that I have included copyrighted material that surpasses the bounds of fair dealing within the meaning of the Canada Copyright Act, I certify that I have obtained a written permission from the copyright owner(s) to include such material(s) in my thesis and have included copies of such copyright clearances to my appendix. I declare that this is a true copy of my thesis, including any final revisions, as approved by my thesis committee and the Graduate Studies office, and that this thesis has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other University or Institution. in ABSTRACT The Thirty Kilometre Zone is about a man who becomes lost in the shadows of an unspeakable and unvoiced past, who sets off into the core of his mother's secrets with the hope of somehow finding a way out of the traumatic cycles that have defined them both. Through a parallel narrative, long-eluded memories overtake his mother's dying mind, the very past shielded by a silence meant to save her son from sorrow. The themes of Chornobyl and Stalin's Famine-Genocides are interwoven through a mainly contemporary setting. After the accident at Chornobyl, Ukraine, authorities defined the fallout field by means of three successive contamination zones extending from the power plant. The radioactive environment has been termed the exclusion zone, the alienation zone, or the thirty kilometer zone. It is this motif that informs both the narrative's themes and title. IV DEDICATION For my darling son, Alexander Nicholai. V ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to the courage of my grandparents, Anna Grona-Krawetz and Dan Chmara, who faced lives of unimaginable hardship to give us lives of unimaginable ease, dreaming became possible. Without the selflessness, constancy, and faith of my parents, Ted and Olive, no vision of mine could ever have been explored. The journey, once undertaken, was nurtured and nourished by my husband, Greg Meloche, who knew how to keep the dogs of reality at bay while possibility took form. My most tender gratitude goes to my little boy, Alex, whose arrival in the midst of all this became the embodiment of all dreams, all possibilities. Appreciation goes to Miss Medley Small, who intuited what took me thirty one years to see for myself, and who gave me the first inkling of what I could be. A long overdue thank-you is owed to Dr. Eugene McNamara for graciously allowing me to come out of nowhere and slip into the broad embrace of his wisdom and talent for one life-changing year. My gratitude to Dr. Alistair MacLeod, who might not even realise that thirteen years ago his reassuring remarks over the graduate-level quality of papers long forgotten sparked my academic aspirations. Thanks to Nino Ricci, for editorial insight, for generosity, for strength and kindness, who helped place me on this path. Without Dr. Dale Jacobs and Dr. Stephen Pender, whose classes in critical theory sent forth brilliant shafts of intellectual light, the beautiful, harrowing process of metamorphosis would never have taken place in my work. Thank you to Dr. Karl Jirgens and the creative writing class of 2006/07 - in particular my friend and fellow dreamer, Leah Laxdal - for a two-semester voyage into the creative dark matter whose occurrence comes to the writer obliquely if at all. Finally, a deep and heartfelt thank you must go to Dr. Susan Holbrook. The integrity and gentle strength of experience held out to me during our initial meeting while I was in the last trimester of pregnancy seemed to parallel what turned out to be the end of a long and difficult creative gestation as well. No better coach, mentor, and teacher could have been found to bring forth this artistic progeny. Under Susan's care, what had been onerous became easy. Ambiguity was replaced by certainty. With her guidance and support, I could do justice to my material and finally write this story as it was meant to be told. After a year of intense work, I can feel proud of this accomplishment. VI TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY iii ABSTRACT iv DEDICATION v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi ARTIST'S STATEMENT viii BIBLIOGRAPHY xvii CHAPTER I. Purgatory 1 II. Returns 26 III. Old Country, Old World 44 IV. Fallout 57 V. Boatwoman on the River Styx 68 VI. Bearings 91 VII. Ravens and Ravings 108 VIII. Vanishing Act 120 IX. The Boy Who Came Out of His Skin 142 X. Landscapes of Time 162 XI. Departure 179 XII. God, Man, Ghost 196 XIII. Past and Present Collide 215 XIV. Stillness and Silence 241 XV. And In the Setting of the Sun 255 XVI. Memento, Memoriam 273 XVII. Ground Zero 291 VITA AUCTORIS 311 vii SILENCE AND SPEAKING, NARRATIVE AND KNOWING Trauma Trauma contaminates time and place. It transmits from human to human, along family lines, and into the very quantum matter of cultural life. In The Thirty Kilometre Zone, the question of personal and cultural identity in the face of trauma arises from the oppositional dynamic between narrative and silence. Psychologists Barbara Fiese and Arnold Sameroff posit that understanding the meaning of experience is dependent upon a narrative charting of individual lifetime experiences (Fiese and Sameroff 2). Within that framework of meaning is included both the individual and those significantly touched by his/her experience. There is discursive and expurgative power in language through narrative, and through the interconnected matrix of stories that comprise it. And although narrative creates an existential, cultural, familial, and personal portrait of strength and weakness, success and failure, survival and defeat, for historian James Wilkinson, as long as the traces or remains of history comprise our body of evidence, the state of evidence reflects the state of history. Within these metamorphosing conditions of what, precisely, constitutes historical evidence, and thus history, the narrative ultimately becomes a fiction, a series of interpretations and extrapolations of the past rather than its accurate reflection (Wilkinson).

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