On Traumas In Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga Of An American Family

Alex Haley, a black writer, is known as the “The Griot from Tennessee”. His works mainlyabout his family story have much value in a historical sense. His nonfiction Roots: The Saga ofan American Family which describes his ancestors’ miserable lives ranks in the line of best sellerafter publication and causes a great sensation both at home and abroad.Trauma theory mainly describes an overwhelming experience of sudden or catastrophicevents, in which the response to the event occurs in the often delayed, and uncontrolled repetitiveoccurrence of hallucination and other intrusive phenomena. These experiences can bring endlessharm, which will impact people’s future life. The trauma theory insists that trauma can becategorized into physical, psychological and cultural trauma in principle. Roots mainly describesthe miserable life of the first three generations among the seven who are the black slaves underthe double oppression of slavery and racism. Their experiences are the epitome of thousands ofblack ancestors. So the application of trauma theory to analyze Roots can excavate the influenceof slavery and racism on the road to strive for freedom.On the basis of trauma theory, this thesis analyzes traumas brought by slavery and racismfrom physical trauma, psychological trauma to cultural trauma embodied in the nonfiction. In thediscussion of physical trauma, this thesis goes from the individual trauma to collective trauma toillustrate the fact that consequences of trauma are not only personal, but also can bring Dominoeffects. The analysis of psychological trauma is done from the two aspects: the symptoms ofpsychological trauma and the black’s deprivation of civil rights and freedom of faith. The blackscan never psychologically step out the shadow of slavery. At last, cultural trauma the blackssuffered from is embodied in language use, naming and the loss of oral and material folklore toillustrate the evasion of white culture under the influence of slavery and racism.Roots is a bloody history of Afro-American enslavement. Through the application of traumatheory to interpret the fates of the first three generations of the Kunta’s family, Roots: The Sagaof an American family finds that it is trauma and blasphemy of human civilization and humannature caused by slavery and racism.