Trauma, Memory And Recovery

The Bonesetter’s Daughter is an autobiographical novel, in which the charactersand the author, Amy Tan, have much similar experiences. In this sense, the author’strue feelings in confronting trauma and subjective creation of characters set thetraumatic theme of the novel. Therefore, with the combination of Amy Tan’straumatic experiences, this thesis will analyze the novel from the perspective oftrauma, interpreting the traumatic experiences of the characters and traumaticsymptoms so as to reflect the historical and cultural connotation and interpret how thetraumatized recover from trauma.This thesis falls into six parts. The introduction part first gives brief introductionto Amy Tan’s life experiences, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and related studies onnovel. The second chapter introduces trauma theory, including the concept of trauma,the development of trauma theory, and trauma in literature studies. The third chapteranalyzes Amy Tan’s own traumatic experiences, the traumatic symptoms of thecharacters in the novel, and the effect of trauma. The traumatic experiences causeserious effect on the traumatized, overwhelming them by the strong sense of guilt andimages of ghost for a long time. The fourth chapter discusses the reasons causing thetrauma, which include the memory of historical, cultural, and childhood trauma.Thefifth chapter provides methods for recovery from trauma, including writing cure andlove cure. The last chapter presents the conclusion. Considering her own traumaticexperiences, Amy Tan points out that people should face trauma with courage, insteadof avoiding it. Through writing and love, people can get out of trauma and regain thehope for the future.