| The Goldfinch is the third novel of America author Donna Tartt and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2014.It was a traumatic story told by a thirteen-year-old boy,Theodore Decker,who miraculously survived a terrorist bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art but lost his beloved mother unfortunately.Written in retrospective first person narration,the readers are plunged into the mental process of an adolescent who has suffered common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorders.Compared with the studies of the novel in the western literary world,the domestic studies of Donna Tartt and her award-winning work The Goldfinch are relatively few.What's more,the related systematic studies of the protagonist Theodore's traumatic experiences are still on a sporadic group.Based on Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery,the thesis has described the protagonist Theodore's trauma symptoms,found out their causes,and showed his efforts to recover from it.Through analyzing the ending of the novel,we could find that love,understanding and support from others are the remedy for the protagonist Theodore to go out of his traumatic situation.The thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter gives an introduction to Donna Tartt,her work The Goldfinch,and the trauma theory and its development.The second chapter focuses on the symptoms of the protagonist.According to the trauma theory,in the aftermath of traumatic events,the survivors will be haunted by the symptoms of hyperarousal,intrusion,the feeling of guilt and so on.In the third chapter of this thesis gives a further analysis of the causes of Theodore's trauma.Theentanglement of the social,familial and personal causes makes Theodore's life unusual.In the forth part of this thesis,the author focuses on Theodore's struggle to recover from his traumatic experiences.After regaining the sense of safety,Theodore was ready to transform his trauma memories and to start a new life.And the last chapter is a conclusion. |
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