Let The Trauma Echo No More: A Study On Khaled Hosseini’s And The Mountains Echoed

The Middle East has a profound influence on the international community. In recent years, the turmoil, wars and terrorism in this area have attracted much attention to the history, culture and people in Middle East countries. Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini incorporates his own experience into his works and presents the life stories of ordinary Afghan people to his readers through literary creation.Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. At the age of fifteen, he moved to California with his parents after seeking and being granted political asylum in the United States. His first novel The Kite Runner became an international bestseller and his second book.4 Thousand Splendid Suns was also a great success. In 2013, Hosseini published his latest work And the Mountains Echoed, in which he presents how two Afghan siblings, Abdullah and his younger sister Pan, are forced to separate due to poverty and turmoil and how they get reunited after more than half a century. Hosseini also tells nine independent but interconnected stories from different perspectives, which evolve around the story about the two siblings. These stories are set in various countries including Afghanistan, the United States, France, and Greece, covering the period between 1949 and 2010. They not only depict the lives of Afghan people and overseas Afghan emigrants, but also relate the experiences and feelings of international aid workers as well as their friends and relatives.There has always been great public concern about the treatment of psychological trauma, or in other words, how to help people who suffer from PTSD to recover from their trauma physically and psychologically. The recovery of psychological trauma is inextricably linked with the narration of the traumatic experience. Studying literary works from the perspective of trauma theory will help us develop a better understanding of the characters in the novel and their experiences. In addition, the theory will give us more insight into the minds of the traumatized characters, and provides us with a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the socio-historical context covered by the novel. Critics have applied trauma story to the interpretation of Hosseini’s first two novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Also, among the researches on Hosseini, many have directly or indirectly mentioned the traumatic memories, traumatic events, and the aftermath of traumatic experience in his first two novels. Yet since Hosseini is still a new writer on the rise, there is not much research on him in China, and studies on his third and latest book, And the Mountains Echoed, are far from enough.In And the Mountains Echoed, most of the main characters have experienced various traumas. Psychological trauma caused by factors such as physical wounds, broken families, the cruelty of war and even the persecution against unprivileged people by the Taliban and the warlords has devastated their self-awareness, their identities and their ability to communicate with the outside world, and thus brings tremendous impact to the lives of the traumatized. In the book, some of the main characters have shown symptoms characteristic of PTSD in various degrees after going through traumatic events, such as forgetting and re-experiencing the traumatic events, depression, numbing, and even self-destructive or suicidal behaviors. Psychological trauma will affect more than people’s lives as individuals. Trauma is closely associated with the socio-historical context and will eventually affect the community and its culture. As a consequence, the bonds that link the people from the same community together will be destroyed and existing values can become damaged or even lost. This thesis tends to interpret Khaled Hosseini’s third and latest book And the Mountains Echoed from the perspective of trauma theory, and analyze the causes, the manifestations and the recovery of the psychological trauma displayed by the characters in the book.The thesis is divided into five parts. In the introduction, I introduce the author and his works and illustrate the significance of this research. Also, this part presents the past studies of trauma theory and critical reception of Hosseini’s books. Chapter Two explores the causes of the characters’psychological traumas, examining the survivors’physical wounds and illness, family disruption and national catastrophes such as poverty, wars and persecution. Chapter Three studies the symptoms of trauma at both the individual and the collective level. Chapter Four focuses on how the characters recover from their traumas through three stages:establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and reconnecting with the community.Compared with the previous two novels, in which Hosseini concentrates on portraying the sufferings and the struggles of Afghan people and Afghan emigrants, And the Mountains Echoed presents a much broader setting and more diversified characters, and reflects the close connections among people from different parts of the world in this age of globalization. Psychological trauma is not peculiar to a certain country or people; instead, it is a universal experience. Through analyzing the individual and collective traumatic experiences depicted in And the Mountains Echoed, this thesis aims not only to expose the sufferings of Afghan people struggling under poverty, wars, turmoil, tyranny, and persecution, but also to explore their survival mechanism. What is more, this thesis seeks to raise public awareness of trauma survivors, and encourage people to treat the traumatized people around us with more care and assistance.