Abstract

Muted tells the story of George Osterman, a husband, father, brother, and son who was struck with a dissociative disorder brought about by an incident at a subway station. Muted begins with the death of George's father. As the story progresses, the reader will see the history and changing relationships within George's family. My goals are to investigate familial traits, those acquired and those passed down. How much of our identity is tied to our personality? Would it be a blessing or a curse to lose the ability to feel emotion? The story is told in two sets of interlocking chapters. One set of chapters, told in first-person present tense, follows George the week between his father's death to his funeral. The other set, told in first-person past tense, highlights individual members of George's family, told in a loosely chronological order along with random facts and information George knows of the subject. With little ability to connect emotionally, George is in the unique position of being an objective narrator while also being tied to everyone in the story. Influences for Muted are varied, but remained tied to objective storytelling, specifically Ernest Hemingway's short story work. Their power lies in not hand feeding the reader how to react to a situation, instead forcing them to decide for themselves. The reader will be presented with a lot of seemingly random information. But within that raw data resides complete characters that detail their relationship to George and to each other.