Scars Do Not Define A Person

The death of a loved one can result in a trauma where the painful experience causes a psychological scar. Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones explores the different ways in which people process grief when they lose a loved one. When young Susie Salmon is killed on her way home from school, the remaining four members of her family all deal differently with their grief. After Susie’s death, her mother, Abigail Salmon, endures the adversity of losing her daughter, her family collapsing, and accepting the loss of the life she never had the opportunity to live. Abigail uses Freud’s defence mechanisms to repress wounds, fears, her guilty desires, and to resolve conflicts, which results in her alienation and

Laurell K. Hamilton spoke in great words that, “there are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” Hamilton embodied a central state of mind of a person who is mentally ill. The wounds mentioned are those caused, and worsened, by traumatic events and public perception of a person with a mental illness. The women in the short stories that have been read embody an internal injury caused by an outward force. In “Story of an Hour”, “Rose for Emily”, and “Yellow Wallpaper” it is impactfully shown how traumatic life experiences can lead to and worsen mental illnesses.

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them”, says Maya Angelou, an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. This quote reflects to Sarah’s journey in the novel Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay, since the main character, Sarah, faces events that affect her well being, as they make her both weaker and stronger. These events causes her to lose her innocence, makes her persistent, and then eventually drives her to be pessimistic. Sarah experiences traumatic events through her journey, which leads her to change both in a positive and negative way.

In her short story, Good Country People, Flannery O’Connor employs all the elements of humor, irony and, paradox intermingled within the system of Christian belief in evil and redemption. This is no more evident than in the character of Joy, the daughter, who had lost a leg in a hunting accident at the age of 12 and who now has a wooden leg in his place. Throughout the story, it becomes increasingly clear that Joy’s physical affliction is closely paralleled by a spiritual one as well. As the narrative unfolds, the great lengths Joy has gone to recreate her inner self, her soul, are revealed in painstaking detail. It appears she has succeeded in fashioning her own soul into a spirit that is as hard and unyielding as the prosthesis that now takes the place of her missing naturally soft and flexible appendage.

Maggie and her father never got along since the accident, and forgiving him takes every ounce of strength that she has. In order to rejoin her father in his life, she has to make the most of what he has left, as he is dying of cancer. She takes a short leave from her job to take care of him as he fades away. This fading resembles past regrets and struggles leaving both Maggie and her father’s thoughts. And though they are leaving each other once again, it is as if their bond is only getting stronger. As he passed, Maggie’s nursing and care symbolizes “I forgive you.” This knot being tied closes the window to her past, and opens her to what she and her father wanted her to accomplish, through love and loss. The ending is a metaphor of a split road, and the choice of which road to take is none other than your own, and you are responsible for the

She claims, “for six years I do not stare at anyone because I do not raise my head” showing that because of her injury confidence strips away and she loses this view of perfection in herself. Scars tear one apart from their confidence and true beauty because something unnatural and terrible must have occurred in order for one to submit involuntarily to absolute vulnerability. Walker states, “I watch as its trunk, its branches, and then its leaves are blotted out by the rising blood.” “Blood,” in this sense refers to the beauty that is drawn out of the soul when an inner crisis occurs (Walker). McCloskey claims, “The gender crosser is trying to join the women. To pass as one, and instead they are treating her like a man, maybe nuts, probably dangerous, definitely another one of those bloody men” (McCloskey, 294). When McCloskey uses the word “bloody,” she references being drawn out by exclusion and how the cruelty she endures strips away her

Laurie Halse Anderosn has written a book which is considered as a trauma novel “speak”. Usually anger is a phase that begins with madness and ends with regret, but in this book anger will be tackled in different way, Melinda’s anger starts with silence and ends with speaking. In other words it’s starts with fear and ends with triumph over self. Over the course of the novel silence struggling with anger is leading to speak. Anderson incorporated all themes in anger direction with different techniques such as flashback, allusion, symbolism, and fragmentation.

Moreover, the author portrays the character’s loneliness, feelings, and emotions as a result of her physical and mental distress. Similarly represented in Willow Weep for Me and its depiction of Danquah, her sister, and friends’ alienation and isolation regarding their clinical depression (Danquah). Further, the “pain” and “whimpers” are the physical and emotional responses to her illness, which can be compared to Grealy’s bodily response to chemotherapy, “wanting to turn itself inside out, made wave after wave of attempts to rid itself of this unseeable intruder, this overwhelming and noxious poison” (66).

Many people know what it feels like to be “trapped” in the emotional sense of things, but how many can say they have been both physically and emotionally trapped. Charlotte Perkins Gilman used her personal bout with depression to create a powerful fictional narrative, which has broad implications for women. When the narrator recognizes that there is more than one trapped, creeping woman, Gilman indicates that the meaning of her story extends beyond an isolated, individual situation. Gilman’s main purpose in writing The Yellow Wallpaper is to doom not only a specific medical treatment but also the misogynistic principles and resulting sexual politics that make such a treatment possible. Those things lead to the major themes of the story: freedom, confinement, and madness.

A major result of the abuse reveals itself through Bone’s confusion of the true meaning of love. Her mother and the rest of the Boatwright’s show Bone a much different facet of love compared to Daddy Glen’s ideas. Daddy Glen constantly reminds Bone of how much he loves them all; however, she can’t understand why his love is manifested so strangely. She longs for the love of this “father figure”. Although, even his methods of abuse cloud her thinking, leaving her incapable of deciphering between pleasure and pain, especially shown in her masturbation.

In her short story, Good Country People, Flannery O’Connor employs all the elements of humor, irony and, paradox intermingled within the system of Christian belief in evil and redemption. This is no more evident than in the character of Joy, the daughter, who had lost a leg in a hunting accident at the age of 12 and who now has a wooden leg in his place. Throughout the story, it becomes increasingly clear that Joy’s physical affliction is closely paralleled by a spiritual one as well. As the narrative unfolds, the great lengths Joy has gone to recreate her inner self, her soul, are revealed in painstaking detail. It appears she has succeeded in fashioning her own soul into a spirit that is as

These constant beatings in Maggie Johnson’s home, furniture thrown from parent to parent, and every aspect of her family life as being negative, her family situation is not an extremly healthy one. But, despite her hardships, Maggie grows up to become a beautiful young lady whose romantic hopes for a more desirable life remain untarnished.

Pauline Breedlove's personal history is shown to have played out in extreme measures in the life of her daughter. From the early part of her life she has worn a shroud of shame. The book says that it is due primarily to her injured foot that she felt a sense of separateness and unworthiness and

Although a light read, her experience is heart-breaking as she is abused at home, institutionalized, and instead of being treated for her depression, doctor’s attempt to “feminize” her with eye shadow and lipstick. She is the type of advocate that makes noise in a silence because she tells a tale that would otherwise be unknown.

It is through the physical pain that the reader understands the emotional strain and turmoil of the protagonist’s plight. The juxtaposition of survival and living are never more evident here. Her children are kidnapped; killed or sold. She has a body still recovering from the birth of a child, and she is forced to take her mother’s place, as a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault. Walker cleverly crafts this sense of desperation with Celie’s soul baring letters to god, the reader realizes she is has no one else to turn to; her writing only re-enforces her father's control over her. Her persevering spirit is what makes her survival so unique in the sense that she does not become embittered through any of it. “I look at woman, tho, cause I am not scared of them.” Telling god that she has not been traumatized at all by her mother’s passing, in fact, she goes further on “Mabey cause my mamma cuss me you think I kept mad at her. But I ain’t I feel sorry for her. (Walker, 5)” This for the reader is the most heart-breaking stance that she takes, as the reader is aware of the fact that her mother hated Celie’s guts with writing agony because her husband choose to rape her when she could not have sex with him. The reader singularly carries this sense of desperation for the protagonist as she continues to power through the intensity that surrounds her.