A Study On The Characters' Trauma In Falling Man

Wars,disasters,terrorist attacks and violence are likely to bring trauma to victim s and bystanders,including psychological trauma and collective trauma.They affect people's lives all the time.Psychological trauma is also known as individual trauma,probably caused by a small injury or accident while the collective trauma is mostly caused by the disaster or event that has a s ignificant influence,such as war,genocide,atom ic bomb a ttacks and terrorist activities.This is the sixteenth year of 9/11 attack,and people are still not completely out of it.Whenever a new terrorist attack occurs,we will remember the terrorist scene of 16 years ago.This terrorist attack is very pa inful for Americans.It not only caus ed a large nu mber of casualties,but also changed the lives of victims and their families,causing serious trauma to them.DeLillo,a contemporary Am erican writer,tells the story of the victims and their families in the aftermath in Falling Man,which is called the representative of 9/11 fiction and reflects the trauma and impact of the disaster.This paper intends to study the characters in Falling Man and analyze the psychological traum a and collective trauma brought to them by the terrorist attacks.The first part makes a brief introduction of Don DeLillo and his nov el Falling Man.It also discusses the research status abroad and at home,which leads to the research perspective and significance.Then it introdu ces the trauma theories including those of Cathy Caruth and Jon Allen.According to these theo ries,the author analyzes the psychological trauma and the collective trauma of the characters in the nove l,so as to reflect the injury caused by 9/11.Critics at h ome and abroad m ostly do their re search from the perspective of the content,theme,narrative skills,post-m odernism and mental trauma,while few people discuss from individual trauma and collective trauma.However,the ability to accurately identify the type of trauma to the patient has a critical role in the treatment of trauma.This paper,combining the theory of psychological traum a and collective trauma,is to analyze the im pact of trauma on the lives of victims in Falling Man,the causes of their trauma,as well as the tre atment of their trauma.We hope that we can m ake some contribution to the recovery of traum a victims by analyzing the trauma on the characters of the novel.The first chapter analyzes the influence of psychological trauma and collective traum a on the main characters in Falling Man.The second chapter first talks about the causes of psychological trauma and collective trauma caused by 9/11 and then an alyzes the causes of trauma of the direct and indirect victims in the novel.The third chapter discusses salvation of the main characters in the novel.The conclusion summarizes what has been discussed in the previous chapters.