City Research Online

Abstract

Although a culturally significant and often socially enjoyable element of societies around the world, it is an unavoidable truth that the consumption of alcohol can be highly addictive and damaging. This damage can be compounded when alcoholics form part of a family unit, with children exposed to the erratic and sometimes violent behaviour their parents exhibit as they battle their addiction.

As a result, writing an alcoholic parent can be a difficult task, with the portrayal of their addiction and treatment of their children having huge ramifications on how they will be perceived by the reader. However, the challenge of this task becomes greater still for those writing autobiographical texts, where the author must distil the complexities of someone who raised them into a functional part of the narrative.

In this thesis, I will be analysing three autobiographical texts from authors who have tackled this challenge: Jeanette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle, Edouard Louis’s autofiction text The End of Eddy, and Douglas Stuart’s autobiographical fiction novel Shuggie Bain. Despite their differences, analysis of these texts has revealed a clear unifying element regarding the alcoholic parents in each narrative: An undeniable sense of tragedy. Moreover, this tragic element has proven to be intrinsic to both creating a nuanced depiction of their characters and their wider roles in the narrative.

Therefore, this investigation outlines how each author portrays the alcoholic parent through a framework constructed around the theories of tragedy. This is the subject of the opening chapter, demonstrating how addict characters are compatible with a tragic framework due to their drinking being the tragic flaw which ensures their downfalls. This analysis will subsequently be supported by the second chapter, which explores the implications of a tragic addict character being a parent. Using family systems theory, it will explore how their behaviour affects the child protagonist even once they have left their parents behind, leading to questions of the addict parent’s tragic self-destruction being cyclical. Finally, these elements are combined with an exploration of mode, and how it interacts with the narrative function of the alcoholic parent depending on the messaging the author leaves with the reader.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Additional Information:	The thesis also contains a piece by the author called 'Six Weeks'.
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman P Language and Literature P Language and Literature > PE English P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity > Media, Culture & Creative Industries School of Communication & Creativity > School of Communication & Creativity Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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