Trauma And Recovery-a Study Of Trauma In The Bonesetter’s Daughter

Amy Tan is one of the most outstanding Chinese American writers at present. TheBonesetter’s Daughter with strong characteristics of autobiography is Amy Tan’s fourthnovel based on the life experiences of her mother as well as herself. So far, many criticsfrom home and abroad have done comprehensive researches and thorough analysis of thetheme, mother-daughter relationship, feminism and discrepancy between Chinese cultureand Western culture. However, few of them concentrate on the psychological trauma ofChinese American females, which is a major concern of Chinese American womanliterature. In Amy Tan’s works, the trauma is like polygon prism reflecting the existencepredicament of the Chinese American females. Hence, this thesis is an endeavor to gothrough a detailed reading of the novel with the employment of trauma theory to paymore attention to the protagonists’ trauma and recovery in the novel.This thesis is composed of six parts. Chapter one draws a sketch of Amy Tan andher The Bonesetter’s Daughter and briefly reviews the studies carried on the novel fromhome and abroad and thus digs out the objective and significance of this thesis. Chaptertwo introduces the trauma theory and gives an account of the development of traumatheory, which provides a theoretical framework for the text analysis. Chapter threeanalyzes the family trauma, war trauma and racial trauma combined with LuLing andRuth’s traumatic experiences so as to better understand their inescapable struggle in thepredicament of trauma in the novel. Chapter three employs the method of close readingand trauma theory to discuss the symptoms of trauma and its far-reaching impacts andlife-long shadow upon the protagonists. Chapter five puts emphasis on the exploration ofworking through the trauma. In the novel, LuLing and Ruth have successfully walked outof predicament of trauma and the relationship between mother and daughter has gotreconciled. The conclusion part summarizes the whole thesis. The study of trauma in TheBonesetter’s Daughter is not only to reveal the living predicament of the traumatizedprotagonists and their chaotic inner world, but also endeavor to call on the traumatizedChinese American females to reconstruct new identity so as to work through the haze oftrauma in American mainstream society.