A Senior Capstone Experience by Melinda Kern ’26

Submitted to the Department of English

Advised by Dr. Rydel

Contributor Biography: Melinda Kern is a recent graduate who majored in English and Psychology
from Laurel, MD. She enjoys writing, hiking, and doing ceramics in her free time.

Short Description: “Tragic Texts as Tools for Hope” explores how community dissolving
in the wake of war can lead to alienation, and how literature can create new communities across
time, language, and space to process depression and grief. Although seemingly disparate,
separated by language, culture, and time, these themes in both content and form are explored
through Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human and “The Wanderer.”

Read Melinda’s SCE below: