- Title
- The existentialist roots of noir: on the literary influences of Shoot the Wild Birds
- Creator
- Tasker, Michael Caleb Morgan
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- The creative component to this thesis consists of a short novel, Shoot the Wild Birds, which addresses themes of family, purpose – both true and misguided – and responsibility. However, it is also a novel that owes a thematic debt to noir fiction, but not a debt of plot, story or character. Rather it is the manner in which noir fiction focuses on, and uses, existentialist themes that influenced my work. The novel features Samuel Holiday, a divorced taxi driver living in Gulf Coast Florida, who misses his daughter, his father, and his old life in the mid-west. He spends his days alone, quietly trying to fight off a slow, sinking depression and, at times, wild panic attacks. When April Jones comes to stay at the same long-term cabin rentals, the two become close. However, when Samuel finally spends time with his daughter again, he comes home to find April has shot herself. Influenced by the lingering effects of finding his own father hanged when he was a boy, the mystery car that waits outside the cabins at night, and the haunting after-effects of April’s suicide, Samuel’s worry causes him to unravel the small steps he had taken to repairing the damaged relationship he has with Willa. After a mental - and physical - breakdown finds Samuel in the hospital he decides that what matters is doing right by his daughter. While Shoot the Wild Birds is not strictly speaking a crime novel or a mystery, it does display the profound influences of a specific aspect to noir fiction, that being the existentialist principles found in so much mid-century noir. The accompanying critical exegesis ‘The Existentialist Roots of Noir: On the Literary Influences of Shoot the Wild Birds’ examines several themes that are foundational principles in existentialist thinking in order to demonstrate that the fundamental tenets of existentialism are inextricably linked to noir fiction. I look to six noir novels to analyse how noir fiction is imbued with existentialist renderings of estrangement or alienation; the absence of predetermined meaning and quest for purpose; and the fissured and/or lost sense of identity that so adroitly, and habitually, depicts the despair and anxiety of the noir protagonist.
- Subject
- creative writing; fiction writing; crime fiction; noir; existentialism
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1427595
- Identifier
- uon:38552
- Rights
- Copyright 2021 Michael Caleb Morgan Tasker
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 110 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |