| Title |
Garcia, Maria_MENG_2019 |
| Alternative Title |
Eden's Inmates |
| Creator |
Garcia, Maria |
| Collection Name |
Master of English |
| Description |
In this essay, I argue that Rachel Kushner explicitly invokes the American Adam in The Mars Room to demonstrate the trope's incongruities through a contemporary, female, urban protagonist: a subject who experiences an inverted reality of this idealized figure. Largely, The Mars Room explores American approaches to agency, individualism, and the intertwined state of nature and technology to explicate the country's foundations, which are themselves inspired by a maintained idealism . The novel charts the ways in which this national idealism steers individual narratives and the process in which a disillusioned protagonist becomes forced to subscribe to this thinking (thus operating in a network of institutions influenced by the nationwide trope). By employing a character who avoids conventions and who is then forced to work within those previously rejected conventions, Kushner captures what nonfiction works cannot so easily demonstrate-the impossibility of an American Adam fantasy and, nonetheless, its influence on the construction of society, which reaches across technology, institutions, nature, and gender and class expectations. |
| Subject |
Literature; Popular literature; Research in literature |
| Keywords |
Literary tropes; Idealism; Kushner, Rachel; The Mars Room |
| Digital Publisher |
Stewart Library, Weber State University |
| Date |
2019 |
| Language |
eng |
| Rights |
The author has granted Weber State University Archives a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce their theses, in whole or in part, in electronic or paper form and to make it available to the general public at no charge. The author retains all other rights. |
| Source |
University Archives Electronic Records; Master of Arts in English. Stewart Library, Weber State University |
| Format |
application/pdf |
| ARK |
ark:/87278/s6gzp7k0 |
| Setname |
wsu_smt |
| ID |
96788 |
| Reference URL |
https://digital.weber.edu/ark:/87278/s6gzp7k0 |
