A Study Of Trauma In Olive Kitteridge

Western literary aesthetic has shifted subtly in the early 21 st century owing to great changes in politics,economy,and public psychology.Many British and American writers show an inclination to write about trauma,responding directly to terrorist attacks,discussing the influence of regional conflicts and wars,or focusing on ordinary people's conflicts and predicaments.A number of traumatic short story cycles have gained critical and popular success,showing Western authors' reflection on social issues,conveying their concern for ordinary people,and providing reference for studying the narrative mode of trauma.The contemporary American writer Elizabeth Strout(1956-)was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009 for Olive Kitteridge.Composed of 13 interlinked short stories,it tells about the contemporary life of ordinary people in Crosby,a town in Maine,America,especially their interpersonal conflicts and psychological wounds.Current studies on Olive Kitteridge mainly focus on the theme of interpersonal alienation and spiritual predicament.Some of the studies touch upon the issue of trauma but not systematically.Besides,scholars seldom analyze the literary form and techniques of the work.Thus,based on the method of textual analysis and mainly with the employment of theories about trauma and the short story cycle,this thesis aims to analyze the theme of trauma and its corresponding literary form and techniques in Olive Kitteridge.The main body of the thesis consists of three parts.Chapter one analyzes the causes and manifestations of the characters' personal trauma and the underlying social crises.Chapter two explores how the characters cope with trauma and their general attitudes towards it.Chapter three examines how the literary form and techniques help the author artistically present trauma so as to convey the theme.By depicting family and love trauma,Olive Kitteridge reflects the loss of religious faith,the prevalence of psychological disorders,and the predicament of the aged in contemporary American society.But as the characters sustain each other through trauma with empathy and cope with their own trauma by telling,they show a general inclination towards improvement or recovery,endowing the cycle with a sense of healing.In terms of the artistic presentation of trauma,the author writes the stories in the literary form of the short story cycle.The centripetal repetitions of traumatic events throughout the cycle emphasize the theme of trauma and indicate theinevitability of trauma in life;the centrifugal textual divisions organically present the characters' traumatic ruptures.In addition,the fragmentary narration helps to illustrate the difficulty of the traumatized people in remembering and telling the traumatic events.Moreover,the change from black to blue imagery corresponds to the characters' relief of trauma in the cycle.Through Olive Kitteridge,Elizabeth Strout responds to the traumatic vein in contemporary American literature,shows her reflection on the social problems in contemporary America,and expresses her humanistic concern to her readers.She consoles them with the sense of hope and healing conveyed by the stories and encourages them to treat their trauma with empathy and by telling or communication.