A Study Of Hemingway’s War Novels From The Perspective Of Trauma Theory

Ernest Miller Hemingway(1899-1961)is a famous American novelist.His life is full of traumatic experiences,which leads to his transformation in the values of war,death,love,etc.He once said that war is the best subject to write,and the psychological trauma of war to a writer is hard to heal.He wrote these traumatic experiences and the resulting diversified thoughts into his four War Novels The Sun Also Rises,A Farewell to Arms,For Whom the Bell Tolls,and Across the River and Into the Trees,in order to express himself.The introduction part of the thesis introduces the present research status of Hemingway from the perspective of trauma,and then elaborates the trauma theory and points out the significance and value of studying Hemingway’s war novels from this angle.Trauma in the above four works can be specifically summarized as physical trauma and mental trauma.Physical trauma is manifested as physical disability caused by war and physical trauma from life.Mental trauma is manifested as a distinct traumatic symptom,which can be summed up as two major categories: confusion and anxiety,emptiness and despair.Hemingway uses the traumatic narration skillfully to highlight the traumatic experience of the characters in the novel and in himself,which includes the autobiographical narration,forced repetitive narration,and nonlinear narration.At the same time,Hemingway reflected the changing values of his trauma experience in these novels,which can be embodied from three aspects: The theme of love—from the happy beginning to the tragic ending;the theme of war—a transformation from opposing the war,advocating the war to hating the war;and the theme of death—from the fear of death,to contempt for death and finally hoping for death.The conclusion part summarizes the full text,and points out that Hemingway’s traumatic writing is a try to heal his wounds.From the philosophical point of view,it is derived from his pursuit of the value of his own existence and his concern for the fate of mankind.Meanwhile,Hemingway’s true and profound writing style made his works provide valuable references for the contemporaries and later generations.All these make the four war novels have universalsignificance and value.