Trauma Studies On The Unusual Life Of Tristan Smith

Peter Carey (1943-), one of only three writers to have won the Booker Prize twice, is one of the most distinguished contemporary Australian novelists who has gained international fame. Despite the fact that he is now living in New York, he still writes about his people and shows great care to the spiritual well-being and identity belonging of his people, especially those who suffer from traumatic events. With the help of trauma theory, this thesis analyzes traumatic causes and symptoms at both individual and collective level in The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, and tries to work out ways to recovery indicated by Carey. Enlightened by the "telling" step of recovery proposed by Herman, the author of this thesis also proposes the idea that as a matter of fact, Carey’s narrative employment is a way to recovery by arousing his people’s awareness of traumatic memories stored in their unconsciousness.The thesis is made up of five chapters. Chapter one gives a brief introduction of Peter Carey’s life and his literary career, provides an overall understanding of trauma theory, and explains the significance of this study. Chapter two explores major traumatic causes of the title figure Tristan Smith and of imperialist hegemony at collective level. Tristan’s unfortunate physical deformity predicts a lifetime of trauma and unusualness. His unusual parentage adds more unusualness to him. Both traumatic causes account for his traumatic symptoms such as sense of unsafety, paranoid obsession with acting and identity crisis, as is elaborated in chapter three. At collective level, imperialist hegemony makes the people of small countries feel that they themselves are second-rate and uncertain about their national identity. Chapter four discusses possible solutions to recovery. For Tristan the first and foremost thing is to develop sense of safety. Only when sense of safety is established, can he retrieve his sense of identity. As to collective recovery, Carey doesn’t arrange a triumphant ending. He simply exposes the complicity of identity construction, indicating that all efforts aiming at identity construction, whether fail or not, are worth a shot and will eventually come to define national culture. Besides this Carey’s narrative employment also paves the way for traumatic recovery of his people. In chapter five the conclusion part, through the traumatic analysis of the novel, the following findings are proposed. Carey’s description of Tristan’s traumatic experiences reveals his humanistic concern: people do obsessive or paranoid things for traumatic reasons. If voices are given to them, instead of despising, evoked in on-lookers’ heart will be sympathy and understanding. In identity construction, every effort is worth making and will eventually come to define national identity. And out of the textual context, Carey’s narration is a kind of retelling aiming to national traumatic recovery by transferring traumatic events from the unconsciousness into the consciousness, and integrating it into personal narrative or life story.