A Traumatic Study On The History Of Love

Nicole Krauss is a prominent contemporary Jewish female writer in the United States,who has been voted by New Yorker as an outstanding novelist under forty in 2010.Her novels are known for their complex narrative structures and profound social significance.The History of Love as her classic work instantiates her unique writing skills and creative principles from many perspectives.The History of Love juxtaposes several story lines around three Jewish families who immigrate to the Americas,interweaved by the lost manuscript of the same name.These strands of plot,from different aspects,unfold that main characters in the novel respectively experience the war trauma,the cultural trauma,the domestic trauma and the emotional trauma.Through modernist methods,Krauss reveals the physical and psychological traumas those Jews suffer from,and the process of their recovery.Although The History of Love artfully recreates the traumatic experiences of Jews,it is a novel of hope rather despair: main figures in the novel exert themselves to heal traumas,rebuild the faith and start a new life,even though they live in bitterness and depression.Therefore,under the framework of trauma theory,this thesis aims to deeply analyze the traumatic symptoms of each character,find out the collective and individual reasons of their traumas,and expound how they actively seek traumatic recovery.Besides the introduction and the conclusion,the main part of this thesis consists of three chapters.The first chapter analyzes the traumatic symptoms of key characters in The History of Love in detail.The traumatic symptoms of them mainly include loneliness,silence,communicative impediments,split self and identity anxieties.Then the second chapter probes into the causes of psychological traumas,according to symptoms discovered in the previous chapter.The Holocaust damages main characters’ living environments and shatters their beliefs,forcing them to flee to the Americas as refugees.While fierce conflicts between Jewish and American culture exclude them from mainstream society,which casts them into states of loneliness and terror.In addition,family tragedies and emotional setbacks aggravate their own psychological traumas.The loss of beloved makes Leo lose the support of his existence;because of the death of father,Alma and her brother live in an abnormal environment;Litvinoff is tormented by his conscience due to his betrayal of friend.The third chapter discusses how they actively seek recovery from traumas.Leo copes with the past through narrating his traumatic experiences and reconstructs his identity with the help of the community,and eventually he works through his traumas.By keeping writing diaries,Alma recalls her traumatic memories.Meanwhile,under the guidance of bibliotherapy,she retrieves her identity.Thus Alma escapes from the shadows of traumas and starts a new life.With the tender care of his wife,Litvinoff gradually has the courage to face his own past and eventually confesses his fault through his publication.Through interpreting The History of Love in the light of trauma theory,this thesis concludes that: the fundamental element of working through traumas lies in the victim’s conscious effort.Only self-redemption can help the victim extricate himself from the terror of traumas and open a new chapter of life.