Date of Award
Fall 2025
Document Type
Thesis (Master's)
Department or Program
Master of Arts in Liberal Studies
First Advisor
Saul Lelchuk
Second Advisor
Anna Minardi
Third Advisor
Donald Pease
Abstract
On 28 September 2024, the narrator of this story, his four-year-old son and wife arrive in Lisbon, where they have decided to spend his sabbatical after eleven years of teaching French at a boarding school in New England. His objective is clear: to heal. For the past two years, his liver has been showing warning signs. Despite all the tests, the doctors are unable to establish a clear diagnosis. The narrator begins to wonder if his failing body is but a reflection of the failing world around him. As he travels across the Atlantic Ocean to Portugal, he remembers a lecture from one of his professors at the Sorbonne in which she mentioned a letter that Dante sent to a cardinal indicating the existence of spiritual cells. Are these cells real or a mere fantasy? The narrator embarks on a journey to find out, convinced that his discoveries might be able to cure him.
“Ill” is a fictional memoir and travelogue set in the year 2028 in which the narrator, back at the boarding school, reconstructs his stay in Portugal. The text meditates on the mechanisms at the heart of human memory and imagination. It is also a project that tries to answer some pressing questions: Do we become an extension of what we build? What sort of illness has taken hold of the Western World and its people? Can we heal? And if so, how? “Ill” offers the voice of a man whose body and mind once tried as hard as they could to find convincing answers to these inquiries.
Recommended Citation
Marchand, Stephen P., "ILL" (2025). Dartmouth College Master’s Theses. 257.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/masters_theses/257
