Narration Of Trauma: By The Light Of My Father's Smile Reconsidered

Since Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for her The Color Purple, there has been a boom in Walker's study in China. So far, most of the studies focus on her masterpiece, The Color Purple. Although a few studies have been conducted on her novel By the Light of My Father's Smile(1998),the researchers have concentrated more on its themes of violence, homosexuality, patriarchy and womanism.The thesis is a psycho-analytic reading of the novel by applying trauma theory. The term"trauma"derives from Greek, whose original meaning is"a physical wound". Now, it has been extended to a psychic injury. In the 1980s~1990s, the focus of trauma study has shifted from psychological to cultural perspective. The thesis investigates the characters'physiological and psychological wounds in By the Light of My Father's Smile. By analyzing the characters'ways of working through trauma, we arrive at a better understanding of the novel.By the Light of My Father's Smile revolves around the Robinsons. The protagonist Robinson is a victim who suffers from his individual and collective trauma. As a black anthropologist, he has to take up the position of priest in order to get some fund from the church. Robinson is an atheist, whereas he loses himself in white culture and imposes the whites'values on his two daughters. Influenced by the male-centered Christianity, Robinson becomes hypervigilant when it comes to sex. After getting the news that Magdalena has sex with the Mundo boy Manuelito, he beats her hard. This beating serves as a traumatic event which destroys Magdalena's life and exerts a considerable influence on Susannah. Both of them are haunted by their traumatic memories and show various trauma symptoms. Pauline, Susannah's homosexual lover, is another victim who has been traumatized in her childhood. She intends to steal Susannah's childhood to make up for hers, which draws Pauline into her traumatic memory. The thesis will make a detailed analysis of the characters'symptoms, such as dissociation, reexperiencing and hypervigilance, showing the ways of working through trauma, viz., sisterhood and Mundo culture. In the novel, the traumatized work through the shadow of trauma with the help of sisterhood and the guidance of Mundo culture.Obviously, this is a typical trauma novel. The techniques of ghosts'narration, non-linear narrative and polyphony are the skills with which Alice Walker presents the trauma novel better. The ghosts are the haunting effect of the past; non-linear narration is the representation of the fragmental traumatic memories; polyphony offers an opportunity for the traumatized to speak out their traumatic experiences. The characters'narration is the process of trauma healing. Through this work, Alice Walker tries to heal her own trauma and looks for the ways of working through trauma for the trauma victims. Walker speaks highly of the equality between men and women, between the blacks and the whites. In her eyes, the equality is the basis of building a harmonious society.There are five parts in the thesis. The first part includes the introduction to Alice Walker and her works, literature review, and the research target of the thesis. The second part introduces some important terms in trauma theory: PTSD, working through trauma, posttraumatic growth, and then a survey is done on the current literary trauma study. The third part discusses the characters'traumatic events and symptoms,and explores their processes of working through trauma. The fourth part illustrates the formal techniques for conveying trauma, including the ghosts'narration, non-linear narratives and polyphony. The final part is a conclusion: the novel expresses the author's concern for the trauma in the black community, and displays her constant outlook on womanism.