Destruction And Rebirth

Alice Sebold is a famous writer in contemporary American literature.Among her three works,The Lovely Bones is the most famous one.For this novel,Sebold earned immeasurable praise from celebrated critics and publishers.The novel tells a harrowing story of Susie Salmon,a 14-year-old girl,who has been raped,killed,and dismembered by her neighbor Mr.Harvey,and she narrates the story from the heaven about how her shattered family’s struggle to rebuild after her death.In recent years,The Lovely Bones has received widespread praise and honor,and a majority of critics conduct researches from the perspective of Gothic elements,symbolism,feminism,psychology,and narratology.However,few people interpret the novel in terms of trauma theory.Based on that,this thesis is inclined to adopt three aspects of trauma theory: traumatic symptoms,traumatic causes,and trauma recovery,to interpret individual and collective trauma,hoping to give theoretical guidance and inspiration to the victims in contemporary society.The aim of the research is threefold.The first task is distinguishing and accounting for the symptoms of individual trauma(Susie,Jack,Abigail,and Mr.Harvey)and of collective trauma(the ethnic groups represented by the Singhs and the oppressed married women represented by Ruana Singh).Then,combined the novel with the background of its creation,the thesis investigates the reasons of individual trauma and collective trauma in term of individual,domestic,as well as social factors.And the last task is to act out the characters’ healing process based upon the three stages of recovery put forward by Judith Herman,and then to discuss Sebold’s intention with the expectation to add some fresh ideas to the following research.Through this study,it is found that trauma exerts tremendous influence on the growth of characters.As one of the traumatized people,The Lovely Bones witnesses how Sebold comes to terms with trauma and reinvigorates herself,which enables readers to experience the trauma together with the traumatized person so as to treat trauma and the traumatized people appropriately.