“Trauma is the psychoanalytic form of apocalypse, its temporal inversion. Trauma produces symptoms in its wake, after the event, and we reconstruct trauma by interpreting its symptoms, reading back in time.” (Berger 20) James Berger uncovers just how literary scholars have turned to notions of trauma as tools to examine historical catastrophe. The effects of catastrophe, as he claims, “may be dispersed and manifested in many forms not obviously associated with the event” this is a recurring theme in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. This dispersal happens when traumatic effects transpire that may seem unrelated to a traumatic event. Although it cannot be adequately contained or comprehended when it occurs, its impact is not felt until many years later. These repressed and unresolved effects will continue to haunt the present because the traumas have the ability to permeate throughout a person’s life events (past, present, and future).
Oryx and Crake is a novel about one man’s struggle to survive in a world where he may be the last human alive. He faces this struggle after power corporations start a plague through their manipulations with genetic engineering. Crakers, a genetically modified group of people are the only other survivors of this catastrophe. Margaret Atwood chooses to tell this story through the vantage point of a man named Snowman (once known as Jimmy). As he reminisces about his life, this science fiction novel captures just how events unresolved in the past continue to haunt the present. This is revealed through Snowman’s inability to connect to humans. His isolation is prevalent throughout the book; and his life.
A persistent and present theme seen is Jimmy’s wavering connection to humans start with his ea...
... middle of paper ...
...e over unfortunately this was short lived and Oryx was taken from him. Crake kills her and Jimmy shoots him in turn. Hence, once again, leaving Jimmy isolated in life.
According to Freud, “overwhelming events in one’s personal history could be internally censored and repressed, yet interminably return in the present under the guise of somatic symptoms, as in hysteria”. Snowman’s obsessive memories is a result of all the trauma Jimmy faces throughout the novel; the loss of his mother, Delores, Killer and lastly Oryx and Crake. Jimmy is then left with the task of caring for the Crakers which he believes are the only other sensitive beings on the planet. Jimmy feels a sense of obligation because they become a living representation of his loss. He needs them just as much as they need him. The Crakers are pivotal in Snowman’s survival in this post-apocalyptic world.
Diane Urban, for instance, was one of the many people who were trapped inside this horror. She “was comforting a woman propped against a wall, her legs virtually amputated” (96). Flynn and Dwyer appeal to the reader’s ethical conscience and emotions by providing a story of a victim who went through many tragedies. Causing readers to feel empathy for the victims. In addition, you began to put yourself in their shoes and wonder what you would do.
It seems that throughout the novel there is an extended metaphor of Snowman as various figures from the Christian bible. The first figure that Snowman can be said to represent is that of Adam, the first man, though the similarities between the two characters do not follow the same chronology. Just as Adam is given the animals as companions to look over, similarly Crake has ensured that the Crakers and Jimmy are both left in the newly re-created world as companions.
...rt-breaking result of racism in the United States and the subject has made its way into the African American literary tradition. Slave narratives such as Douglass’ Narratives and Negro spirituals such as “I feel like my time ain’t long” and “Many Thousands Gone” have made African American literature true to the history that has been recorded. A present day controversial subject in our society is why can’t people, especially African Americans, forget about slavery and the adversity against African Americans? It is believed that African Americans have progressed and made advancement since that time; however, with writers like Elizabeth Alexander, the past just can’t go away forgotten; especially a past that was as gruesome as that of African Americans. Every single bloody lash, death and groaning happened and as she said we have to “say it plain” that it happened.
Aside from narrative and detail, Neufeld uses color and type styles throughout the book to indicate the changing atmosphere and moods. Hartman, an expert in trauma theory describes the use of color and light in the trauma novel as “The paradigm of coming-to-knowledge, expressed often as a movement from darkness to light” (Hartman 263). At first in A.D. the colors are uniform, but they begin to degrade and mix as the storm displaces and detaches the New Orleanians amongst it. He begins the story i...
Lessons from the Forever People: Overcoming Cultural Trauma with Dreams and Memory in Phyllis J. Perry’s Stigmata
World in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and the Year of the Flood . 23rd ed. Vol. 2. Toronto: Psychology Press, 2012. N. pag. Literature Interpretation Theory. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
In the article, “The Cause of Her Grief”, Anne Warren tells us a story of a slave woman ordered to be raped and forced to reproduce. Warren first begins telling the slave woman story by taking us back and recollecting the slave woman’s voyage from her home land to the ownership of Mr. Maverick. She used vivid language during this passage to help the reader imagine what type of dissolute conditions she traveled in to end up being a rape victim. For example in the section where Warren attempts to describe the condition of her travel. She wrote “When speaking of the origins of captured slaves, we are often reduced to generalities”. (Warren 1039) In that moment she addresses the fact that as readers we often over simplify the idea of slavery and what it was like, we could only imagine. The author uses the words “captured slave” to set the wretched and forced precedent for the remainder of the reading. At this moment she is requiring that you imagine being captured, held upon your rightful will of freedom. This is important to the slave experience; they did not have a choice just as this woman had no choice. She goes on to address the conditions of the vessel on which the salve woman traveled. She wrote “crammed into the holds of wooden ships, trapped in excrement, vomit and sweat” (Warren 1040). This was yet another demand from the author for the reader to place themselves in the feet of the slaves. It is also another key element in understanding not only slavery but also John Maverick’s slave woman. She travelled weeks, sometimes months to make arrive at the given destination. Once the slave woman arrived to land it was time for her to be sold. Yet again we are now asked by the author to paint a more vivid picture of the slavery exp...
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, Oryx and Crake, she constantly places the reader in an uncomfortable environment. The story takes place in a not so distant future where today’s world no longer exists due to an unknown catastrophe. The only human is a man who calls himself the Abominable Snowman or Snowman for short, but in his childhood days his name was Jimmy. If the thought of being all alone in the world is not uneasy enough, Atwood takes this opportunity to point out the flaws of the modern world through Snowman’s reminiscing about Jimmy’s childhood. The truths exposed are events that people do not want to acknowledge: animal abuse for human advancement, elimination of human interaction due to technology, and at the core of the novel is the disturbing imagery that slavery is still present. Modern day servitude is an unsettling topic that has remained undercover for far too long. However, the veracity is exposed in the traumatic story of Oryx. In order to understand the troubled societies of today, Atwood unmasks the dark world of childhood bondage through the character Oryx, but she gives subtle insights on how to change the world for the better before it is too late.
Trauma: an emotional shock causing lasting and substantial damage to a person’s psychological development. Linda Krumholz in the African American Review claims the book Beloved by Toni Morrison aids the nation in the recovery from our traumatic history that is blemished with unfortunate occurrences like slavery and intolerance. While this grand effect may be true, one thing that is absolute is the lesson this book preaches. Morrison’s basic message she wanted the reader to recognize is that life happens, people get hurt, but to let the negative experiences overshadow the possibility of future good ones is not a good way to live. Morrison warns the reader that sooner or later you will have to choose between letting go of the past or it will forcibly overwhelm you. In order to cement to the reader the importance of accepting one’s personal history, Morrison uses the tale of former slave Sethe to show the danger of not only holding on to the past, but to also deny the existence and weight of the psychological trauma it poses to a person’s psyche. She does this by using characters and their actions to symbolize the past and acceptance of its existence and content.
Mary Rowlandson’s story came from the journaling of her brutal 11 weeks in captivity filled with sad and unfortunate events. She was taken captive by a group of Indians after they surrounded her house and devastated her town. Watching her family be slain in front of her, she herself was shot. Her daughter, which was a little over six years old, was shot in the stomach while Mary held her but still grasped onto life for a few more days (Lincoln, 258). Mary Rowlandson and her child were taken hostage and made to w...
Tragedy impacts each human being differently. Some are able to forgive and forget, some become angry and seek vengeance of some sort, while others bury those feelings deep within themselves and become apathetic. In The Assault by Harry Mulisch uses careful diction, apprehensive tone, striking oxymoron, and dark irony to show that while many may have been involved in the same tragedy, their roles in the tragedy and how they handle grief from it create a different outcome for each.
The concept of displacement from rape in “Woman Thou Art Loosed” and “Mississippi Damned” is represented by mental distortion, trauma, and self-degradation.
Bouson, J. Brooks. Margaret Atwood the robber bride, the blind assassin, Oryx and Crake. London: Continuum, 2010. Print.
The film Beloved was released in 1998 to mixed reviews. The movie, based on Toni Morrison's novel, tells a ghost story from an African American perspective. It takes place only a few years after the abolishment of slavery, with the traumatic scars still fresh and unable to be healed. In the film the protagonist, Sethe, is revisited by the ghost of the daughter she murdered eighteen years earlier. I shall argue that her daughter, Beloved, is the embodiment of the trauma of the African American experience of slavery. In order to support this claim, I will explain what constitutes historical trauma in film, how historical trauma is specifically represented by the character Beloved, as well as how this film becomes a teaching device for the American nation about this trauma as a whole.
Neil Gaiman’s “Snow, Glass, Apples” is far from the modern day fairy tale. It is a dark and twisted version of the classic tale, Snow White. His retelling is intriguing and unexpected, coming from the point of view of the stepmother rather than Snow White. By doing this, Gaiman changes the entire meaning of the story by switching perspectives and motivations of the characters. This sinister tale has more purpose than to frighten its readers, but to convey a deeper, hidden message. His message in “Snow, Glass, Apples” is that villains may not always be villains, but rather victims.