Trauma And Recovery In Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces

Anne Michaels· Fugitive Pieces is a novel about post-Holocaust life. Throughthe narration of two characters, Anne Michaels presents the psychological trauma ofHolocaust survivors, including their second generation. This novel has attracted muchattention with rich themes, the highly lyrical, metaphorical and symbolic language.However, the researches on this novel are still limited in both the quantity and literaryperspectives. Critics are likely to combine trauma theory with this Holocaust novel;most of them have focused on the relationship between memory and landscapes or therelation between place, mourning and remembrance. However, none of them havetouched upon the relation between trauma recovery and literary writing.This thesis aims to interpret the relationship between memory, mourning andwriting and to investigate the possibility to recover trauma through writing byfocusing on the Holocaust survivors and the second generation by mainly applyingCathy Caruth and Judith Herman·s trauma theories. This thesis will first analyze thetraumatic symptoms through which the destructive effects of memory are presented.Second, the mechanism of the traumatic symptoms will be discussed, which can helpunderstand the causality of the traumatic symptoms and thus works as an indicationfor trauma recovery. At last, the thesis will expound the redemptive power of memoryby presenting the process in which writing transforms the traumatic memory intonormal memory, accomplishing the process of mourning, and linking past and present.This thesis attempts to explain the intergenerational transmission of trauma and thepossibility of intergenerational transmission through literary writing and reading.