The Writing Of Trauma In Norman Mailer's Novels

Norman Mailer(1923-2007)is a famous contemporary American novelist,statesman,former chairman of the American branch of the International pen Society,an academician of the National Academy of Literature and Art and an academician of the American Academy of Literature and Arts.He won two Pulitzer Awards and one National Book Award.Throughout Mailer's literary works,the hidden characteristics of trauma narrative can be strongly felt.This paper will combine trauma and narratology to interpret the trauma of the characters in Mailer's works.This article attempts to analyze and interpret the artistic expression of traumatic narrative in Mailer's novels.The traumatic characters in Mailer's works analyze the traumatic narrative skills used by Mailer,and through Mailer's choice of the way of self-redemption of the traumatized characters,he realizes that Mailer's tortuous transformation in the way of personal thought is related to his own experience.It is closely connected with American society at that time,and shows Mailer's deep thinking about life,self and society in the process of self-cognition.This paper is divided into five parts,of which the second,third and fourth parts are the main part of the paper,the paper will focus on these three parts.The first part of the introduction briefly introduces Mailer's life experience and creation,explains the definition of trauma and the characteristics of trauma narrative.This paper summarizes the research of Mailer's works at home and abroad,and points out the innovation and value of this paper.The first part starts with Mailer's works and reads the text carefully.According to the source of injury,it is divided into family trauma and war trauma,and the trauma theme in the novel is explained by analyzing the trauma symptoms and trauma events of the characters.The second part,combining trauma and narrative theory,expounds the narrative structure and discourse of trauma in the text,and analyzes the narrative strategies used by Mailer to depict the trauma of characters.The third part,from the perspective of wound recovery,points out Mailer's characters' ways of coping with trauma in his novels.From the point of view of time,the seventies were a period of Mailer's transformation of the traumatic outcome of the characters.Before the seventies,the characters used to escape trauma as the ending.After the seventies,the characters dared to face the trauma directly,and could face the trauma squarely,showing the change of Mailer's own ideology and consciousness.The conclusion part summarizes the contents of each part of the thesis,and points out the significance of Mailer's writing character trauma.Through writing the character's trauma symptoms,expressing the character's trauma theme and applyingthe trauma narrative strategy,the author tries to find out how to deal with the trauma.Mayer uses trauma to show the personal pain in front of the reader,so that the reader can resonate with the individual trauma,thus triggering the thinking of the social phenomenon.