Dissertation Defenses

Doctoral Dissertation Announcement

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Candidate: Thomas Martin

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: English

Title: The Country of the Blind

Committee:
Dr. Jaimy Gordon, Chair
Dr. Allen Webb
Dr. Lisa Minnick
Dr. Robert Eversz


Date: Friday, March 16, 2007 2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Waldo Library, Room 3001

Abstract:
The Country of the Blind, a novel steeped in the bedlam of Guatemala’s civil war, is a story about Henry Foster, a seventeen-year-old boy from the United States who tries to hold his family together during a crisis in his father’s sabbatical year. Astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Milton Foster uproots Henry and his family from their Maryland home and brings them to a cottage beside Lake Atitlan, a body of water encompassed by mountains and volcanoes in western Guatemala, where he can research his book on the celestial maps of the ancient Maya. The family arrives in June of 1978, before the presidential inauguration of General Lucas Garcia, whose administration would soon become a marker for the onset of extensive violence and repression. After Henry is accosted by a roadside soldier while defending his nine-year-old brother Jason, their mother insists upon leaving the country. But their father refuses to go before his research is complete.  Caught in the crossfire, the boys must choose between their parents.