Peyton, Ann

In Eudora Welty's works, the importance of the mother-daughter relationship lies in its ability to expand the reader's understanding of the individual's search for enlightenment. As a wanderer acts and reacts to people and events, she is most often influenced by her mother, or mother-like figures, and other pairs around her. Welty's bonded women represent the historical, religious, psychological, and sociological studies of this interwoven human relationship; her characters are subtly crafted to develop a myriad of close and, at the same time, distant bonds. Welty emphasizes the mothers and daughters of Losing Battles, Delta Wedding, and The Optimist's Daughter though Virgie of The Golden Apples represents the strongest point for the conclusion that the mother-daughter relationship supports and enhances Welty's works.

This thesis demonstrates the dichotomy of opposing political and theological beliefs in two novels of Graham Greene. The journey motif in both the whiskey priest of The Power and the Glory and the Monsignor in Monsignor Quixote parallel the author's development from the youthful political zealot determined to right universal wrongs to the mature acquiescent accepting a unified world as an impossibility. In Monsignor Quixote, Greene depicts a spirit of compassion enlarged by exposure and acceptance of diametrically opposite beliefs. The friendship of the Catholic and Communist enable each to acknowledge the validity of the other's ideas. Their dreams function as concrete and abstract elements in plot development and characterization. This study extrapolates the paradoxical fact of this author's personality as it reveals the serious nature of the young and old Greene, then delights us with the lighter side, thus sensitizing us to elements both tragic and comic.

That Hideous Strength is a treatise on C. S. Lewis's unique conception of mythology. He believed myths conveyed the inexplicable, transcendent reality existing at the universe's center. Distortions as well as accurate reflections have existed in myth thoughout time. That Hideous Strength symbolically exposes the falsity of distorted myths because the institute that is constructing an "ideal" society, founded on evolutionism and utopianism, is annihilated. The veracity of true myths is exemplified in the triumph of a small insurgent group aided by the Graeco-Roman deities and a revived Merlin. The novel's symbolic core is the "myth which became fact," which Lewis believed is the prime reality accurate myths mirror. Ultimately, denial of that reality condemns those deceived by false myths. But affirmation of the "myth which became fact" ensures victory for those enlightened by true myths.

Though a highly original work in its own right, The
Grapes or Wrath by John Steinbeck nevertheless reflects a
number or significant characteristics or Thomas Hardy's six
major Wessex novels. Similarities between the twentieth-century
American masterpiece and the Victorian novels are
especially pronounced in the Following areas: (1) the
analysis or social problems; (2) the use or nature (land
and animals) both realistically and Figuratively; (3) the
portrayal or the failure or Christianity; and (4) the
exploration or the theme or dreams and illusions destroyed
by reality.

This thesis probes the conditions of violence in Hughes's
verse, explains why it occurs so frequently, and gives
reasons for its use. While scrutinizing Hughes's use of
violence, I also demonstrate the strong celebration of life
which occurs in the poetry. I show that both violence and
the celebration of life spring from the same impetus or
spirit which works together to give humankind a sensitive and
complete vision of the universe. I prove that the seemingly
diametrically opposed concepts of violence and the celebration
of life actually exist because of each other, and are in
fact the same exultant energy occurring in different forms.
My thesis deals with Hughes's less-known works:
River: New Poems, Season Sonas, Under the North Star,
The Tiger's Bones, The Iron Man, and selected poems from
Crow.

There is in Elizabeth Bishop's poetry a development which
progresses from an objectified, basically Aristotelian,
mode of presentation to a subjective mode controlled by
post-Kantian ideas of self-awareness to a Husserlian
phenomenological expression of integrated experience.
By using a Hegelian three-part dialectic in which her
three major books, North and South, Questions of Travel,
and Geography III, are viewed respectively as thetic,
antithetic, and synthetic levels of her aesthetic development,
Bishop's poetry may be seen to reflect the ontogenetic
growth of the mind of western man and to be an adumbration
of the same whole to part-to-whole to whole-of-parts
schema which characterizes Western philosophical
thought in general.

The principles of traditional psychiatry demonstrate how
the fathers of all Percy's protagonists are the dominant
forces in shaping their sons' adult love relationships.
Cold and formidable figures, each prevents his son from
developing a sense of confidence and self-esteem. The
heroes, then, still trying to win a parent's approval
after his death, become attached to women of whom their
fathers would have approved. At the same time, each forms
an even stronger bond with a new father figure to replace
the one he never really had. However, as the parents in
The Moviegoer, The Last Gentleman, and Lancelot all had
weak marriages, those of their offspring are also doomed
to failure. It is only when Will Barrett of The Second
Coming rejects his father's values in retrospect and forms
his own superego that a Percyan hero finally chooses an
appropriate marriage partner and the novel ends happily.

Analyses of Aldous Huxley's novels frequently reveal his
interest in both mystical thought and practice. Controversy
develops, however, when trying to identify how and when
Huxley first became interested in mysticism. Some critics
argue that Huxley became engrossed with mystical philosophy
very late in his literary development. Still others contend
that his interest in the world of the spirit begins in
Creme Yellow (1921), deepens with each subsequent work
and reaches a climax with Island (1962), his final novel.
This thesis supports the latter concept, drawing a parallel
between Evelyn Underhill's "Mystic Way'' and Huxley's
progressive involvement with mysticism throughout his novels.

The five novels of Margaret Atwood contain a pattern
borrowed from The Aeneid of Virgil, Aeneas , guided by the Cumaean
Sibyl, descends to the underworld to gain knowledge from his
father, then returns to earth, equipped to fulfill his destiny.
Atwood confronts her protagonists with similar tasks.
The presence of an effective guide and of a positive
parental influence contribute to the completion of each quest,
but the prime determiner of success is the nature of the journey
itself. Seen in her early novels as a source of growth and
enlightenment, the journey is a vehicle of personal development
and awakening. In later works, however, it becomes a snare of
delusion which entraps characters in fantasy, cynicism, madness,
despair and even death. Attwod unfolds a darkening vision of
reality by the manipulation of various elements within the frame-work of descent and return.

Agatha Christie's writing career of more than fifty years
gave her room to develop certain themes in social history.
One of the most interesting of these is her presentation of
women. Christie's two major types are older, unmarried
women and young, high-spirited girls. Within those two
types, Christie deals with the good, the evil, the eccentric,
and the ineffectual. Her characterizations also
include l ess important types, but those tvvo major kinds
of woman dominate her detective novels. Miss Marple in
particular is an important character and incorporates many
of the strong virtues with which Christie imbues her women.