Traumain Philip Roth’s American Trilogy

Philip Roth(1930-)is one of the most influential Jewish writers in the history of American literature,the winner of Pulitzer Prize.The unique Jewish cultural background makes Roth realize multiple traumas in life.Trauma appears to be everywhere in his novels,especially his widely-acknowledged novels American Trilogy(American Pastoral(1997),I Married a Communist(1998),The Human Stain(2000)).These three novels represent the struggling of different groups of people in the American society.Based on close reading,this thesis attempts to explore cultural trauma,historical trauma,and social trauma of main characters in American Trilogy from the perspective of trauma theory,then demonstrates such issues as gender,war,politics,race and family crisis in contemporary America.This thesis focuses on three questions,namely “what are the trauma symptoms suffered by characters in Philip Roth’s American Trilogy” “why do these traumatized characters suffer from trauma?” and“how do these traumatized characters recover from trauma?” From these three questions,this thesis intends to reveal the trauma symptoms and causes,and then explore effective ways to recover from traumas.By analyzing the three questions,this thesis finds that characters in American Trilogy are easy to become victims of trauma.For women,living in the male-supremacy culture,they keep feeling inferior and helpless.As a disadvantaged group,they suffer from both physical and psychological trauma;for men,despite their dominant position,they can not avoid traumas from war,political prosecution and family crisis;For the ethnic Jews,in addition to these common traumas,they feel agitated and depressed because of their marginalized culture;they feel scared and painful because of their nation’s historical sufferings.After being traumatized,some of them just ignore the trauma and struggled through their whole life;some of them resort to trauma narrative like remembrance and mourning to try to walk through traumas.Unfortunately,recovery of trauma is a long process,owing to the insufficientsupport,the traumatized characters fail to re-connect with the community,also,they do not reconstruct their identity which was destructed because of traumas.So they do not completely recover from trauma.This thesis focuses on three groups as female groups,male groups and national group of Jewish people,aiming to not only reveal Roth’s contemplation about the living conditions of mankind,but also highlight the aesthetic tension in Roth’s novels.Most importantly,this thesis wants to dig out the causes and recovery of trauma,which is of far-reaching significance to the traumatized victims.It not only contributes to helping traumatized victims aware of the traumas,but also makes them actively treat that.In this way,this thesis hopes to have implications to the trauma treatment in modern society.