Trauma And Recovery

Toni Morrison has altogether written 11 novels to her credit.The themes of her works are closely related to the tragic fate of African Americans,showing her great concern for African Americans.In 1998,Morrison published Paradise,which revealed the spiritual tragedy of black Americans in the 1970 s.Extensive researches have been conducted by critics on Morrison’s Paradise,including feminism,identity construction,and other perspectives.This thesis adopts the trauma theory of Judith Herman and Cathy Caruth,combined with text analysis,to argue that the various traumatic representations of black Americans brought about by racial discrimination,ideological aggression and other social problems,memories of trauma,and ways to recover from trauma.Introduction introduces Morrison and her novel Paradise,literature review,and trauma theory.Chapter one discusses the trauma representations in Paradise,analyzing the collective trauma caused by racial discrimination and ideological aggression to the black Americans,as well as the individual trauma caused by family and emotional factors.Chapter two mainly explores related traumatic memories,including collective traumatic memories and individual traumatic memories.Chapter three explores the ways of trauma recovery,pointing out the importance of recalling traumatic experiences and restoring connection with the outside world for trauma recovery.The conclusion points out that the women of the convent and the blacks in Ruby town deal with the trauma in different ways,and finally the women in the convent successfully recover from their trauma,but the blacks in Ruby town fail to get rid of the haze of the trauma,which have important guiding significance for the recovery of the trauma.