Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, And History

The author agrees with the idea of women as victims through the characterisation of women in the short story. The women are portrayed as helpless to the torment inflicted upon them by the boy in the story. This positions readers to feel sympathy for the women but also think of the world outside the text in which women are also seen as inferior to men. “Each season provided him new ways of frightening the little girls who sat in front of him or behind him”. This statement shows that the boy’s primary target were the girls who sat next to him. This supports the tradition idea of women as the victims and compels readers to see that the women in the text are treated more or less the same as the women in the outside world. Characterisation has been used by the author to reinforce the traditional idea of women as the helpless victims.

Do we really know how it feels when you’re loved ones are killed after every second or when you will stop breathing? No matter how sad we become after listening to their painful stories, we can’t really feel the pain or problems that the victim’s relatives had gone through. The Road to Chlifa, novel illustrated by Michele Marineau describes the story about a boy who lives in Beirut Lebanon, a country that has been in the civil war for fifteen years. Karim expresses the theme of isolation, through his feelings for Nada. The protagonist in the novel is Karim, 17-year-old boy who lost the girl whom he loved, during the war, and the antagonist is the war occurring in Lebanon and also the school that Karim attends in

“Life is full of unhappiness and most of it caused by women (Harik and Marston 11)”. For women in the Middle East life is faced with great and unequal odds, as their human rights are limited, due to Islamic beliefs and that of patriarchy. From their daily actions at home to their physical appearance, Middle Eastern women are portrayed as quiet, faceless women veiled from head to toe. While this image is just another stereotype, women in the middle do face many obstacles and challenges of creating their own identity as they are frequently denied a voice in their rights. Living in a society dominated by men life is not, but regardless women in the Middle East, predominantly Muslims, continue to fight for

Do we really know how it feels when you’re loved ones are killed in a war or when you will stop breathing? No matter how sad we become after listening to their painful stories, we can’t really feel the pain or problems that the victim’s relatives had gone through. The Road to Chlifa, novel illustrated by Michele Marineau describes the story about a boy who lives in Beirut Lebanon, a country that has been in the civil war for fifteen years. Karim expresses the theme of isolation, through his feelings for Nada. The protagonist in the novel is Karim, 17-year-old boy who lost the girl whom he loved, during the war, and the antagonist is the war occurring in Lebanon and also the school that Karim attends in Montreal. Karim left lonely after his parents went to Montreal, then Bachir moved to Paris and the one whom he loved died.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi is a graphic novel that provides insight into a young girl living in Iran during the hardship of war. Persepolis takes place during the childhood of Marjane Satrapi. It gives a background of the Islamic Revolution and the war in Iran. Satrapi attempts to guide herself in a corrupted world filled with propaganda. She tries to develop her own morality concerning religion, politics, and humanity. Satrapi was blessed enough to have high class status and parents who had an open mindset about the world around them. Thanks to her slightly alternative lifestyle, she is able to reconstruct gender norms that society has set by depicting the different ways women resist them. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others” by Lila Abu-Lughod is an essay detailing the misconceptions surrounding the veil. Through this essay we can see how colonial feminism, the form of feminism in which western women push for a western way of living on their third world counterparts, has shined a negative light on cultures all around the world - particularly Islamic women. The essay shows how women who don’t conform to American societal structures are labeled as women who urgently require saving. Through this essay one can develop a thorough understanding of the veil itself and the many representations it holds to different entities. Although in Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood Satrapi

In Susan Farrell, the author of “Just Listen”: Witnessing Trauma in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, mentioned “...all theorists agree that the process of recovery from trauma must involve a narrativization of traumatic event--putting a sensory images into words in order to integrate trauma into a person 's life story” (186). However, without reading Cathy Caruth’s Trauma, readers will not understand that not only integrating trauma into a narrative will help them recover but it also allows the witness apprehend their flashbacks into meaning. Flashbacks, although are taunting, has the most vivid images compared to narrated memories. For one to remember a highlight or a significant moment, one must preserve it as a flashback. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien convert his flashbacks into narrative memories allowing himself and readers to comprehend his experiences, but O’Brien also added flashbacks into his memories create the most graphic images for the readers.

In Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie shows trauma in a realistic and believable way. He has characters experience traumatic events that stay with them and affect them for a long time, and change said characters in a significant way. He also shows characters who share a common trauma, but react differently - to the point where some characters experience trauma from a situation while others do not. He makes it clear that trauma is significantly different for his characters and that their experiences are not the same. Through these means, Alexie expresses how trauma stays with people, but it is still different for everyone and that it can

In this volume of poems, she vividly describes the chaotic situations and the terror faced by people and children in the midst of terrorist violence and disorder. She insists that language is a powerful medium to voice her opinions and she uses her poems for this purpose. She dwells upon the impact of public decisions and interventions in the form of war and other calamities which disrupt the lives of innocent victims and she holds everyone concerned accountable for this upheaval and unrest. But she inspires her readers to hope for a better future even in the most deplorable conditions.

The authors assert to the reader attention in the literature “Araby” and “ The Things They Carried” that love can be hopeful but it blinds us. Looking back to the text in “The Things They Carried” it about a young lieutenant named Jimmy Cross at war during the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Jimmy is incapable of focusing on the war for the so far reason of his constants thoughts of the girl he loves Martha. Jimmy Cross relies on his love for Martha as an escape from war, this mean that his ability to perform as a leader and his soldierly duties becomes forgotten. In “Araby” is about a boy that is love sick for a girl which he has never had a conversation with. The young boy in”Araby” every morning he lays on the floor in the front parlour watching the door of the girl he love sick for. The boy leaves aside his play time with his friends just to seek upon the girl that gives him butterflies and makes his eyes glow. In both pieces of literature the authors portrays to the reader attention hopes, desire and the bright side and

Psychoanalytic theory maintains that repressed memories are preserved for an indefinite period of time, and can be recovered in their original form through hypnosis and psychoanalytic therapy (McNally, 2003). This concept has been challenged, particularly around the manner in which retrieval happens. Ferracuti, Cannoni, De-Carolis, Gonella, and Lazzari (2002) argue that retrieval through hypnosis can yield confabulations (such as memories from previous lives). Gardner (2004) argues that psychodynamic therapists can place patients at risk for developing false memories. The notion of false memory has gained some clinical validation (Kaplan and Manicavasagar, 2001), increasing skepticism regarding the authenticity of recovered repressed memories. Ganaway (1989) proposed that if memories are not authentic, they could be due to fantasy, illusion, or hallucination-mediated screen memories, internally derived as a defense mechanism. Furthermore, memories combine a mixture of borrowed ideas, characters, myths, and accounts from exogenous sources with idiosyncratic internal beliefs. These inauthentic memories could be externally derived as a result of unintentional implantation of suggestion by a therapist. Advocates of repression used clinical cases indicating that child abuse victims may become amnesic of their trauma and that therapeutic interventions may generate a genuine recollection of their repressed trauma (Brenneis, 2000; Cheit, 1998; Kluft,

The story “Araby” as told by James Joyce is about a young boy that is fascinated with the girl across the street. But deeper down the story is about a very lonely boy lusting for her love and affection. Throughout the story, we see how the frustration of first love, isolation and high expectations breaks the main character emotionally and physically. James Joyce uses the first-person viewpoint to tell this story which helps influence the plot, characterization, themes, and understanding of the main character.

When I decided to take the trauma course, I was hesitant at first to take it. I did not know what to expect nor felt I would be prepare listen to stories about traumatic occurrences, despite of the number of years I have worked in the field of community mental health. Therefore, now that we are in week eight, I am delighted to have taken this course. The impression I had at first, has changed my insight concerning what is trauma, as for many years, I did not understand why a person in many instances, could not process their trauma. In a quote by Chang stated, “The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening; the smaller the doubt, the smaller the awakening. No doubt, no awakening” (Van Der Kolk, 2014, p. 22). The goes in congruence with my understanding on trauma and how it has changed during this course. As a result, I feel I am awakening when acquiring more about trauma.

In Judith Herman’s book, Trauma and Recovery, she discusses her research and work with trauma survivors. In her book, she writes that, “traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life” (Herman 24). She explores the idea that trauma is as individual as it is common, with reactions and the journey to the post-traumatic self similar despite differences in events. In the case of Barbara Gordon, while the event may vary, her physical and mental trauma can be compared to America’s fear of its forfeiture of power to terror and the loss of the towers after September 11, 2001. Trauma is about more than just the physical ramifications; when the physical aspect is fixed, Barbara’s legs and the building of the 1 World Trade Center, the mental and emotional trauma still remain.

The fictional accounts of women’s experiences in Fadia Faqir’s, Pillars of Salt, illustrate issues articulated by women’s rights activists in the Middle East. Traditional roles of women and men and a mythology of femininity and masculinity are juxtaposed with the disparate realities of the characters. The damaging forces of colonial rule, war, and Westernization are also exposed.

Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery provides not only greater understanding of how a traumatic event may defined but also the ways in which the effects of the experience may have a significantly repressing effect on the present and future self. Traumatic events are impressing on the self because they overwhelm the conventional emotional and physical perceptions that humanity has adjusted and modified their selves to. As traumatic events generally involve threats to the emotional and physical self, they differ from common misfortunes as they confront the victim with the feeling of extreme terror and helplessness that in result causes the individual to perceive the experience as one that was out of their control. As Herman reiterates, according to the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, “The common denominator of psychological trauma is a feeling of “intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation” (Herman 104). However, it is the response to the traumatic event in the emotional or conscious self that may differ from one another as there are three differing reactions to the terror factor of trauma: hyper-arousal, intrusion, and disconnection. Throughout this essay the work of Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery as well as Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower will be utilized to illustrated the compromising effects a traumatic experience such as childhood sexual abuse may have on the development of a young teen and the ways in