Date of Award
Spring 5-1-2015
Document Type
Honors Project
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
English, Linguistics, and Communication
First Advisor
Rafferty, Colin
Second Advisor
Rigsby, Mary
Major or Concentration
English (Creative Writing Concentration)
Abstract
As the culmination of my nonfiction seminar (ENGL 470C) with Professor Colin Rafferty, I chose to explore three disparate, but interwoven, narratives: the death of and delayed grief over my high school mentor; my struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; and, the 2011 wildfire that destroyed much of the Great Dismal Swamp. Through a use of segmentation, lyric language, and a manipulation of tense, I explore the tensions underlying these narratives, namely the idea of futility of preparation and the insistence on destructive cycles which sustain themselves. Ultimately, the essay serves on a rumination not on mortality, but on our cultural perception of it as something to be dealt with in the aftermath and the difficulty that subsequently arises from when that perception is flipped and, instead, an end is something to be eternally anticipated and negotiated within that anticipation.
Recommended Citation
McAvoy, Moira J., "Prescribed Fire" (2015). Student Research Submissions. 107.
https://scholar.umw.edu/student_research/107