Date of Award

1-1-1982

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

Abstract

Mary and Simon: A Novel chronicles a period in the lives of three generations of two families in the Mid-western United States during a period of roughly thirty years, 1880-1910. In an early scene Simon fishes, apparently unconcerned that some twenty yards away Mary hangs from a tree, dead. The novel then moves back and forth through their lives, enriching the meaning and significance of this initial scene.Both the structure and the poetic truth of the novel are based on the principle of Theme-and-Variation, an important principle of art, particularly in music, the principle by which the main idea or poetic truth of the work is presented through numerous modifications, each modification having something in common with the main idea, but deviating from it in significant ways.The structure of Mary and Simon consists of recurring scenes or parts of scenes, each recurrence modifying the original scene. For example, the scene in which Abraham and Sara and Simon are traveling across North Dakota in a wagon occurs as the first scene of Chapter One, is repeated with modifications as the third scene of Chapter One, the first scene of Chapter Two, the first scene of Chapter Six, in expanded form as all of Chapter Three, and as an exact repetition in the last scene of the novel.The theme of Mary and Simon is based on the concept that both change and non-change exist at the same time. This concept is perhaps best expressed in the spiritual reality of the Hindu religion, in which Brahma creates, then Vishnu preserves, then Shiva and Kali (his female counterpart) perform a love/hate dance through the cosmos, destroying the creations of Brahma, leaving the seeds for a new creation behind; and the process begins again--Brahma creating, Vishnu preserving, and Shiva destroying-- each cycle different and yet the same as each previous cycle, a modification of the original cycle--each expressing the concept of Theme-and-Variation.The novel is followed by a critical afterword which explores the analogy between the theme/variation principle in music and in fiction, particularly in Mary and Simon.

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