Trauma And Recovery

Japanese British writer Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the greatest British writers of the 20th century. Kazuo Ishiguro's works are characterized with subtlety, reticence and understatement. As Salman Rushdie observed, 'just below the understatement of the surface is a turbulence as immense as it is slow'. His works have been studied from the perspectives of postcolonialism, reader response theory, new historicalism and international writing and so on. More focus has been put on his three novels The Remains of the day, Never Let Me Go and When We Were Orphans. Comparatively The Unconsoled hasn't been given enough attention and is worth exploring and studying.Born in Japan, he and his family moved to Britain when he was five years old.Immigration experience at an early age has made him cultivate an acute awareness of trauma. As one of his middle term works, The Unconsoled is especially characteristic of trauma writing features. This thesis tries to investigate The Unconsoled from the perspective of trauma narrative.Based on the trauma theory of Cathy Caruth and Judith Herman, this thesis mainly examines the trauma narrative in this novel, namely, how Kazuo Ishiguro integrates the content and style of trauma narrative texts by overturning traditional linear narrative and with the aids of postmodern narrative tools. Through analysis of the trauma symptoms and the effects of trauma on the individuals and their family, this thesis mainly studies how Ishiguro employs narrative skills to explicate at a formal level the traumatic themes. Through analysis of the trauma narrative in this novel, this thesis also demonstrates the misery of the unconsoled characters because of their fixation on the traumatized past and the futile reconnection of themselves and with others during the trauma recovery process.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter one briefly introduces Kazuo Ishiguro and his novel The Unconsoled. Literary review is also included. Chapter two introduces the main points of trauma theory and the main means of literary narrative of trauma.Chapter three, four and five are the main body of this thesis. Chapter three analyzes the trauma symptoms of the characters and the effects of trauma on their personality and their family relationship. The main symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder include three categories, hyperarousal, intrusion and constriction. The symptoms of the traumatized characters fall into these categories. Their traumatic experiences lead to their unsuccessful self reconstruction and dysfunctional family and their fixation on their traumas. Meanwhile, the effects of cultural trauma on the community and the effects of traumatized community on the individuals are also explored. The traumatized individuals also fall victims to the scapegoating effects that cultural trauma features.Chapter four examines the narrative skills employed by Kazuo Ishiguro in this novel. The impact of trauma can only adequately be represented by mimicking its forms and symptoms. Literary narrative of trauma provides ways of revisiting the trauma symptoms of the individuals. By means of narrative skills, it demonstrates the psychological process of the traumatized individuals and includes the causes and consequences of their reactions to traumatic events. In The Unconsoled, Ishiguro creatively employs the first person narration, shifting focalization, intertextuality and repetition and displacement of time and space. Through the first person narration and shifting focalization, individuals' psychological process is externalized to bring particular effects since different narrative viewpoints are approached. The key literary strategies in trauma fiction include intertextuality and repetition, which can act at the levels of language, imagery or plot to mimic the effects of trauma. Trauma carries the force of a literality which renders it resistant to narrative structures and linear temporalities. Through displacement of time and space, Ishiguro creates a labyrinthine dream world and demonstrates symbolically the complicated psychological predicaments of the characters by means of dream's condensation and displacement functions.Chapter five is the concluding part of this thesis. In The Unconsoled, Ishiguro has demonstrated that how this novel's trauma narrative narrates the unnarratable and manifests its unique features in the narrative skills and thematic presentation. By creatively employing the first person narration, shifting focalization, intertextuality and repetition and displacement of time and space, Ishiguro explicates at a formal level the traumatic themes and demonstrates the effects of trauma on the characters. Meanwhile,Ishiguro leads readers through the process from trauma acting out to trauma recovery and gives guidance on working through of trauma. The trauma recovery and resolution lies in the traumatized finally can control his memory, come to terms with himself and reconnect with others. This thesis hopes to provide a new analysis perspective of interpreting Ishiguro's works and trauma fictions through the study of this novel's trauma narrative as a different analysis perspective.