Trauma And Recovery:Singer’s Enemies:a Love Story

The American Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer is well-known among the international literature critics for his writing is typical of its distinctive point of view, keen insight, humorous language and philosophic implications. Most of his works reflect unique feature of writing, the cultural tradition in Poland, and show great concerns towards the general plights of the whole human. This is also the key reason that makes him into the second winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, following Saul Bellow, among the American Jewish writers. Written in the endangered Yiddish, he depicts the Jewish society from the17century to the first half of the20century. With the profound Jewish story plots, his works express his sympathy towards the suffering of the whole Jewish nation, and make a further relation with the survival of the human today.Enemies:A Love Story makes an exploration in the experiences between the times the Holocaust survivors arriving in America and the Holocaust period in the World War Ⅱ. The story takes the entangled relationship between the protagonist Herman and his three wives as the main clue, mirroring the plights which the Jews has encountered after immigrating to the American land such as how to inspect Jewish history, to establish cultural identity and to search for spiritual home. As the sufferers and witnesses of the Holocaust, the protagonists in the novel bear the trauma physically and mentally because of the Nazis’ persecution policy towards the Jews. Combined with the analysis of the traumatic experience and symptoms of the protagonists, this thesis purposes to reveal their psychological trauma and depict their journey of recovery at the same time from the perspective of trauma theory.This thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter generally introduces Isaac Bashevis Singer, his novel Enemies: A Love Story and literature review on this novel both at home and abroad, as well as the originality and structure of the thesis. The second chapter focuses on trauma theory. This chapter mainly presents the definition of trauma, traumatic development in three stages, traumatic symptoms such as hyperarousal, invasion and constriction, and recovery strategies such as reconstructing the traumatic story, mourning traumatic loss, reconnecting with others and resolving the trauma.The third chapter mainly deals with the traumatic symptoms presented in the protagonists and their effects. The main symptoms in the novel are re-experience, avoidance, vigilance and insecurity. Herman, Yadwiga, Tamara and Masha all show some of the traumatic symptoms to some extent, and the solution they handle the troubles vary as well.The fourth chapter dwells on the protagonists’ recovery state and offers the reason analysis. On account of different reasons, Herman and Masha get their ultimate ending of disappearance and suicide, whereas Tamara and Yadwiga gain their final healing by bravely facing the new life and being ready to reconnect with others.The fifth chapter is the conclusion, which gives an analysis of the significance of this thesis, with the author’s implication that only facing up to the trauma rightly can the victims gain the chance to achieve their final healing and move forward towards the bright future.By combining trauma theory with Enemies:A Love Story, this thesis not only provides a new perspective to interpret the novel, but also has a certain social and realistic significance in stimulating people to take positive attitude to cope with the trauma.