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These stories examine the lives of working class people in light of the current economic and social climate. They address and attempt to empathize with the despair and disillusionment many working class Americans express in response to their economic and social realities, and the stories attempt to walk a non-judgmental line regarding the attitudes these characters espouse. Instead of judging the characters or championing a particular moral stance, the pieces attempt to present individuals faced with major failures: child abandonment, guilt over preventable death, overriding selfishness, racism, and shame regarding social status. These failures of character or morality echo the larger failings, as the characters perceive them, of their time and place. Within this worldview of disillusionment and despair, many of the characters in these stories choose to struggle toward self-betterment—not economic or social betterment per se, but individual betterment, a reckoning with themselves and their failures that necessarily reflects and interacts with the world they inhabit. These are stories rooted in the Midwest and its rust-belt inhabitants, but for all their contemporary socio-economic concerns, the stories are first and foremost concerned with the individual and representing each individual portrayed accurately and honestly. Master of Fine Arts