"What Children and Cats Hide": Exploration of Childhood Through Surrealist Writing

Abstract

This capstone project in Creative Writing consists of two parts: a short story collection and theoretical analysis of the creative work. The stories in the collection are inspired by and comment on the mundane experiences that almost everyone goes through as a child: being scared of darkness and creatures that lurk in it, or worse getting ready for and suffering through tedious family gathering. However, the world in the stories only seems mundane and ‘normal’ at first. It is in fact an absurd, exaggerated, and more unpredictable version of that what people call ‘“normal life,” and what it has become in the modern era: a form of experience dominated by aims and functions, and relieved only by the temporary respite of organized leisure’ (Laxton 1). The child perspective is used to deconstruct our rule-bound reality, highlight some of the hidden issues or problems they face in real life, rebel, and escape from them. Theory of play can provide a deeper insight into the child’s mind and draw the connection between Surrealism and child consciousness.