Since I haven't posted anything in a couple months, I'm posting this. The following is an abstract for the final project in my fiction writing class. Enjoy.
Tinman has heart problems. He wonders why he allowed himself be afflicted with a thing that would cause him such a variety and depth of suffering. He’s become an insomniac because in the quiet of the night he hears it beating in his chest, marking his inevitable mortality. In order to find sleep again he begins self medicating with alcohol. Copious quantities of alcohol. Shopping carts full.
Tinman’s good friend is Scarecrow who, after receiving the gift of Brain, has become the twenty-seventh smartest man on Earth. With the gift of Brain comes the curse of anxiety. Scarecrow now believes he is so intelligent that he may be able to conclude the possible outcome of future events while being unable to change or preclude or them. Tinman laments the change that taken hold of his friend, once loose and laid-back, now uptight and neurotic.
Upon observing his friend’s precipitous alcoholic decline, Scarecrow suggests that Tinman visit Oz, the man responsible for the heart transplant. Tinman visits Oz and exhorts him to remove the heart, for life with such suffering surely isn’t worth living. Oz replies that he could remove the heart, but the operation would probably kill him. Oz instead offers to prescribe psychiatric medication, a solution Tinman finds dubious but accepts anyways. I imagine Oz and Tinman sharing a therapist/patient type of relationship.
In order to find redemption Tinman must reconcile the ideas that although the essence of existence it suffering, the purpose of existence to find happiness. This is a lesson that Scarecrow, despite his towering intellect, cannot learn and dismisses nihilistically.
This entire mess would take place in the Land of Oz which I imagine as a desolate suburb with parking lots sprawling desert-like toward every horizon. Telephone poles outnumber trees. Pedestrians are unheard of.
