Summerville, Tracy

The Marshmallow Effect is a fictional work that explores the consequences of isolation and trauma on an individual’s identity. The story revolves around the protagonist Arthur, a man who inadvertently creates a reality-bending psychological safe haven to protect himself from his past only to have it warp and transform into an insidious space which forces him to confront said past. This project, written as a screenplay, follows Arthur as he experiences and is affected by horrifically warped versions of his memories, unbound by the rules of reality and fantastical in their proportions, until he becomes an active participant and takes back control of his space and identity. Through discussions of horror, ghosts, folklore, film, and psychological critique, my introduction breaks down the application of setting in the story as a transformative, trauma-informed space that is inexorably intertwined with Arthur’s identity and body, the relationship between the characters and repetition of action to initially reinforce, then defamiliarize, identity, and the difficulties in confronting or coming to terms with trauma in order to move past negativity and into a realm of greater stability in terms of the self and identity.