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This project report reviews how advances in the field of life extension technologies, particularly those promoted by Aubrey de Grey and his Methuselah Foundation, inspired Bonnie Jean Blackburn's original work Psychopomp. With the advent of negligible senescence looming, the story's characters explore the psychological repercussions and challenges of living-in good health-well beyond the century mark, as well as the pro-aging trance that leads people to resist biological interventions that aim ultimately to render death obsolete. Ernest Becker's theory of the causa sui, or personal immortality project, is applied in an analysis of lead character Joseph Basil's centuries-long effort to develop Age Reversal Therapy (ART) for the masses, in an attempt to offset the loneliness of his existence as a semi-immortal psychopomp. The report further analyzes the dramatic repurposing of mythological archetypes and psychological theories throughout the story, and offers a brief explication for the structural form employed throughout the work.
Advisor: | Lane, Brian Alan |
Commitee: | |
School: | California State University, Long Beach |
School Location: | United States -- California |
Source: | MAI 50/03M, Masters Abstracts International |
Source Type: | DISSERTATION |
Subjects: | Fine arts, American literature, Film studies |
Keywords: | |
Publication Number: | 1504431 |
ISBN: | 978-1-124-99363-8 |