Three Inches of Night

The purpose of this thesis is to examine through the medium of short story moments of the unsaid, and how those moments keep us from true, pure communication with ourselves and with one another. Moments of the unsaid are those that make up the hours that make up the days of our lives„ those in which experience cannot be conveyed through language, those, in fact, in which using language to convey experience lessens such. And it is in these moments of the unsaid—where language (written, spoken, or thought) cannot capture truths, cannot link body to body, heart to heart, soul to soul because it acts as a filter, moving us away from what is authentic and veritable—that we most often remain, knowing that there is a lack, but not having the language to fill it. But what lifts this thesis from being merely a conveyance of the unfulfilled state in which we usually exist—that state being one in which we often experience but cannot convey the ineffable—is that there are also glimpses of the said, those moments in which language catches up with experience (as much as language is ever able to do so) and through that language, the heart, the soul, the essence of experience is understood by the one who experiences and, sometimes, by another. And it is only in these moments, when language and experience collide, that we are content with ourselves, and that our relationships are full and intense and honest.