The Never-Knowns is a novel about a high-intensity behavioral group home for adults with severe to profound developmental disabilities, its residents, and the staff who are employed there. Focusing on plural protagonists, no single narrative is ever fully realized or resolved, leaving only a cryptic aggregate of experiences, revelations, and trauma. In a typical suburban neighborhood, much like any of us grew up in or now live, there is a house down the block that no one discusses openly. This house seems like all the rest, well landscaped and tidy. Although three times a day much coming and going of college-aged kids and ne’er-do-wells whispers of something covert, obscure. This house is many things to many people; a workplace, or home, or burden, or profit, or prison. An unfortunate, absurd one-act play echoes infinitely for those kept here. Constance is a thirty-something disabled woman who wakes every morning by sprinting nude in a wondrous fury toward the first person or thing she can destroy. Malcolm is a new staff member who snorts meth and masturbates in his car during shift breaks. Terry is a twenty-five year old deaf mute who believes his clothes dresser is God and always knows exactly how many feet are between him and every other place he’d rather be. Jake is a veteran staff member who has finalized his plans to take all the residents of the house deep into a forest and abandon them. Using disjointed, prolix, and often dissonant approaches to storytelling, The NeverKnowns seeks to convey the perspectives of developmentally disabled individuals who possess few or no language skills, and who are so far detached from their own existence that their iv understanding and interaction with the world is simultaneously grotesque, beautiful, and confounding
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-3638 |
| Date | 01 January 2013 |
| Creators | Haskins, Ryan |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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