IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks :: Browsing by Author "Rebein, Robert, 1964-"

Browsing by Author "Rebein, Robert, 1964-"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

And Just as Far as Ever from the End: A Textual Analysis of The Gunslinger by Stephen King
(2010-01-13T14:24:50Z) Kent, Sharmin T.M.; Eller, Jonathan R., 1952-; Touponce, William F.; Rebein, Robert, 1964-
Beginning as a collection of short stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1978 and novelized in 1982, The Gunslinger is the first novel in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. This thesis explores the textual journey of the novel that serves as the foundation for a series that has left its mark throughout King’s broader fictional canon. After finishing the final three novels of the series, King revised The Gunslinger to bring it closer to the narrative essence of the series’ subsequent novels. Collation of all three versions of the text—the serialized Fantasy & Science Fiction stories, the 1982 novelization and the 2003 revised and expanded version—reveals a sometimes overlapping pattern of revisions to the novel. These revisions concentrate on character, the novel’s cosmological framework, and languages and dialects King uses later in the series. The impact of these revisions extends beyond the plot elements of the series itself, as a number of King’s most popular novels—The Stand, ’Salem’s Lot, and It among them—have plot arcs that bend toward the Dark Tower mythos. King returned to the novel’s three main characters—Roland, Jake, and the man in black—to refine their actions and clarify their motivations. This also gave him the opportunity to provide the reader with more of their interwoven histories, a strategy that established the background for the role each character plays later in the series. In addition to introducing details about the main characters of the series, King enhances and redefines the world of The Gunslinger; the revisions reveal connections both within and outside of the Dark Tower multiverse. King also uses revision to introduce a variety of languages and dialects Roland encounters on his journey through an endless path of worlds. Finally, the textual evolution of The Gunslinger documents King’s development of a theme central to his entire canon: the multifaceted theme of salvation and sacrifice. In controlling the evolution of the Dark Tower series, particularly with his return to revise The Gunslinger, Stephen King shows that he is capable of maintaining a complex saga with a great degree of literary vision and craftsmanship.
Double Visions: Separating Gordon Lish's Edits from Raymond Carver's Original Authorship in Three Stories
(2009-03-18T18:38:44Z) Powers, Michael A.; Rebein, Robert, 1964-; Eller, Jonathan; Touponce, William
In 1998, D.T. Max wrote his article, “The Carver Chronicles,” about the manuscripts Gordon Lish sold to the Lilly Library at Indiana University. The public was made aware of Lish’s heavy editing of Raymond Carver’s short stories—both in early story form and, later, in book collection form. His heaviest editing was during Carver’s first two major story collections, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976), and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981). I discuss three stories, “What’s in Alaska?” and “Fat,” from the first major collection, and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” from the second major collection. For this last story, we will separate Lish’s editorial vision from Carver’s original authorship by comparing the published book text with Carver’s original story, “Beginners”—two versions, one story. The stories were examined to understand Lish’s editorial motives. To generate a deeper understanding of their textual visions, a critical analysis will evaluate their differences. The stories will first be analyzed in the state they existed before Lish’s changes, and then a second analysis will pinpoint Lish’s major editorial changes and show how they affected Carver’s original vision. The analysis will provide a foundation for discovering a final product understood as a combination of two visions, Carver’s original authorial vision and Lish’s editorial vision. The basis for future Carver studies is to separate these men’s work. Carver’s authorial intent becomes paramount in the investigation for finding the true Carver through critical and textual analysis. Their two distinct and separate visions affect how contemporary Carver studies critically examine his work. To understand Carver textually is to get at his original intent, to illuminate his true vision, separate from Lish’s edits, in order to open up a new perspective and understanding of Carver’s emotional depth and expansiveness. Robert Rebein, Ph.D. (Chair)
Halfback on Acid: A Coming of Age Memoir
(2010-07-19T19:06:48Z) Nichols, Jacob A.; Rebein, Robert, 1964-; Beck, David; Kirts, Terry
The hard-boiled detective: personal relationships and the pursuit of redemption
(2010-07-19T17:10:19Z) Howard, David George; Rebein, Robert, 1964-; Eller, Jonathan R., 1952-; Touponce, William F.
By start of the 1920s, the United States had seen nearly forty years of vast accumulations of wealth by a small group of people, substantial financial speculation and a mass change in the economic base from agricultural to industrial. All of this ended in 1929 in a crushing depression that spread not only across the country, but also around the world. Hard-Boiled detective fiction first reached the reading public early in the decade initially as adventure stories, but quickly became a way for authors to express the stresses these changes were causing on people and society. The detective is the center of the story with the task of reestablishing a certain degree of order or redemption. An important character hallmark of this genre is that he is seldom able to do this, or that the cost is so high a terrible burden remains. His decisions and judgments in this attempt are formed by his relationship with the people or community around him. The goal of this thesis is to look at the issues raised in the context of how the detective relates to a person or community in the story. For analysis, six books were chosen arranged from least level of personal relationship by the detective to the most intimate. The books are Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett, The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler, The Galton Case, by Ross MacDonald, Cotton Comes to Harlem, by Chester Himes, Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley, and I, the Jury, by Mickey Spillane. In the study of these books, a wide range of topics are presented including political ideologies, corruption, racial discrimination and family strife. Each book provided a wealth of views on these and other subjects that are as relevant today as when they were written.
"Minds will grow perplexed": The Labyrinthine Short Fiction of Steven Millhauser
(2014-02-25) Andrews, Chad Michael; Rebein, Robert, 1964-; Eller, Jonathan R., 1952-; Bourus, Terri
Steven Millhauser has been recognized for his abilities as both a novelist and a writer of short fiction. Yet, he has evaded definitive categorization because his fiction does not fit into any one category. Millhauser’s fiction has defied clean categorization specifically because of his regular oscillation between the modes of realism and fantasy. Much of Millhauser’s short fiction contains images of labyrinths: wandering narratives that appear to split off or come to a dead end, massive structures of branching, winding paths and complex mysteries that are as deep and impenetrable as the labyrinth itself. This project aims to specifically explore the presence of labyrinthine elements throughout Steven Millhauser’s short fiction. Millhauser’s labyrinths are either described spatially and/or suggested in his narrative form; they are, in other words, spatial and/or discursive. Millhauser’s spatial labyrinths (which I refer to as ‘architecture’ stories) involve the lengthy description of some immense or underground structure. The structures are fantastic in their size and often seem infinite in scale. These labyrinths are quite literal. Millhauser’s discursive labyrinths demonstrate the labyrinthine primarily through a forking, branching and repetitive narrative form. Millhauser’s use of the labyrinth is at once the same and different than preceding generations of short fiction. Postmodern short fiction in the 1960’s and 70’s used labyrinthine elements to draw the reader’s attention to the story’s textuality. Millhauser, too, writes in the experimental/fantastic mode, but to different ends. The devices of metafiction and realism are employed in his short fiction as agents of investigating and expressing two competing visions of reality. Using the ‘tricks’ and techniques of postmodern metafiction in tandem with realistic detail, Steven Millhauser’s labyrinthine fiction adjusts and reapplies the experimental short story to new ends: real-world applications and thematic expression.
Sharing Control: Emancipatory Authority in the Poetry Writing Classroom
(2009-03-18T18:42:49Z) Bell, Robert N.; Kovacik, Karen M.; Harrington, Susanmarie; Rebein, Robert, 1964-
Beyond the boundaries of the classroom, the idea of emancipatory authority is a worldview which encourages the empowerment of the public to embrace different roles of authority, and take action as members of the local, regional, and global community. Within the classroom, emancipatory authority provides students and teachers with opportunities to create an atmosphere where both parties take responsibility for the development of education in one community, as well as creating a diverse environment where voices and ideas blend, and without the traditional classroom hierarchy.
Time skips and tralfamadorians: cultural schizophrenia and science fiction in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five and The Sirens of Titan
(2012-11-16) Gallagher, Gina Marie; Marvin, Thomas F.; Rebein, Robert, 1964-; Johnson, Karen Ramsay
In his novels Slaughterhouse-five and The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut explores issues of cultural identity in technologically-advanced societies post-World War II. With the rise of globalization and rapid technological advancements that occurred postwar, humans worldwide were mitigating the effects of information overload and instability in cultural identity. The influx of cultural influences that accompany a global society draws attention to the fluidity and inevitability of cultural change. A heightened awareness of cultural influences—past and present—creates anxiety for the generation living postwar and before the dawn of the Information Age. This generation suffers from “cultural schizophrenia”: a fracturing of the psyche characterized by anxiety over unstable cultural identities and agency. With the characters of Billy Pilgrim and Winston Niles Rumfoord, Vonnegut explores the different reactions to and consequences of cultural schizophrenia. His unique writing style is an effective hybrid of science fiction conventions and the complexities of human culture and society. Ultimately, Vonnegut explores the dangers of detachment and the complicated nature of agency with novels that are both innovative and accessible.
A Window to Jim's Humanity: The Dialectic Between Huck and Jim in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(2009-01-16T17:50:26Z) Anderson, Erich R.; Schultz, Jane E.; Eller, Jonathan R., 1952-; Rebein, Robert, 1964-
This thesis examines Mark Twain’s use of the dialectic between the characters Huck and Jim to illuminate Jim’s humanity in the classic novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Over the course of their adventure, Huck learns that Jim is a human being and not property. This realization leads Huck to choose to assist Jim in his escape from captivity, and risk eternal damnation according to his religious beliefs. Huck’s decision is driven by the friendship that develops between him and his fellow fugitive on their adventure. Jim’s kindness and stewardship also provide a stark contrast to the treachery of the characters on the banks of the river. Twain thus crafts a message that slavery and race discrimination are wrong without taking the tone of an abolitionist, combining an amusing children’s story with a profound social message. Although definitive proof of his intention to do so has never been found, human friendship is the sliver of common ground Twain used to reach across the profound racial gap in the United States in the late 19th century. The analysis takes place in four parts: (1) a comparison of AHF to other nineteenth century works that featured slavery to establish it as unique among those works; (2) an analysis of the aforementioned dialectic from a modern text of the novel featuring previous deleted parts from the early manuscript; (3) a review of the critical response to the novel which reveals that if Twain was trying to send a message of racial equality, he was not doing so overtly; and (4) a conclusion in which I posit that Twain found a creative solution to a social problem and cite critical discourse that notes Twain’s course of action. This yielded a work that was both more widely read and timeless than a work that confronted slavery directly. Chapters one, three and four utilize critical dialogue and history from print and digital sources. Jane E. Schultz, Ph.D., Professor
Women Like and Unlike Us: A Literary Analysis of the Relationships Between Immigrant Mothers and Their Bicultural Daughters
(2010-08-31T18:29:19Z) Yalimaiwai, Davinia; Kovacik, Karen, 1959-; Fox, Stephen L.; Rebein, Robert, 1964-
The analytical and creative chapters of my thesis display the best and the worst of bicultural daughters and their mothers as writers represent this relationship in short stories. Throughout the analytical chapters, I show that the through their fiction these writers help us understand that the bicultural daughter/immigrant mother relationship not only is affected by general feelings of matrophobia – as Adrienne Rich points out – but also by different pressures and paradigms that can only be experienced if the daughter belongs to and/or associates herself with a different culture than that of her mother. I hypothesize that the stories reflect these paradigms as usually negative because the pressures from both “American” society and the immigrant mother are often so great that the bicultural daughter cannot embrace either one fully. However, with the adverse feelings from both mother and daughter, comes a realization from both that neither will succeed in dominating the other. Once this is established, both mother and daughter will either reach a consensual agreement to disagree, or will continue having a hostile relationship. By including my own short stories in context with the analyses done for the stories by Kingston, Tan, Pietrzyk and Danticat, I hope to bring interest to this genre for further analysis on the bicultural daughter and immigrant mother relationship as depicted in short stories.

Browsing by Author "Rebein, Robert, 1964-"

Results Per Page

Sort Options