The struggle to heal: Pain, disability and the body in contemporary American literature

This dissertation explores how those who have been subjected to pain from torture, disability or a chemical imbalance attempt to heal themselves and to rebuild their shattered lives. The first part of the dissertation specifically explores the plight of the oppressed who have been tortured or beaten. In the attempt to rebuild their lives, the oppressed under discussion complicate their lives further when they reenact their oppressors' violence: they come to think that if they subject peoples' bodies to pain, they too, like their oppressors, will have proof of their power. Some of the oppressed may in fact attempt not to subject the body to pain but rather to love the body. In this way, they try to learn that their bodies have other uses besides being made instruments of torture. However, this effort to love the body may paradoxically become transformed into the desperate need to kill the very body that allows one to be violated. At the same time, the pain felt from torture may in fact sometimes be welcomed: this dissertation also takes a look at how self-torture becomes another possible way for the oppressed to rebuild their lives. Self-torturers attempt to prove their self-worth based on the fact that they can withstand pain. However, the need to constantly inflict themselves with pain merely exposes their doubts about their sense of power. Besides using self-torture, writing about physical pain provides another path to healing. The second part of this dissertation argues that through writing, some disabled people can reshape their responses to their illness. Sometimes, however, writing is not enough and using drugs like Prozac becomes another possible method to heal emotional pain that appears to stem from a chemical imbalance in the brain. Whether sufferers write about their pain, take Prozac, or end up torturing others or themselves, the quest to heal is a non ending process.