Content area
Abstract
This dissertation collects stories from across the author's time of graduate study at the University of Nebraska. They range in style from the realistic setting and fractured narrative of pieces such as "A Slogan for the Way Things Happened" to the fantastical and uncanny, in such pieces as "The Dead Rise." In all cases, however, these stories are unified in their approach to the intertwined themes of love and death - the characters in these stories, for all their striving, do not all necessarily either love or die well. These characters struggle to find and define themselves, through whatever twists and quirks their individual fictional worlds contain; through their actions the reader is pulled along into their vivid worlds, where the Great Plains may at time seem more or less familiar. The pieces in The Seed Eater and Other Stories are engaging and enjoyable as they move fluidly between love and doubt, joy and despair, humor and horror.
