| Bernard Malamud is one of the most important contemporary American writers.He is another outstanding Jewish writer after Saul Bellow.He is good at depicting the people at the bottom of the society,showing the miserable life of Jewish immigrants and their Jewishness.He has published eight novels in his life and more than fifty short stories.Fourteen short stories by Malamud were selected in this thesis,including Armistice,Spring Rain,The Grocery Store,The Magic Barrel,Angel Levine,The Bill,The Death of Me,The Lady of the Lake,Idiots First,The Jewbird,The German Refugee,Black Is My Favorite Color,My Son the Murderer and Rembrandt’s Hat.In these stories,the protagonists,Jewish immigrants,suffer from the trauma in varying degrees.This thesis is mainly based on Judith Herman’s and Cathy Caruth’s theory about trauma and recovery,adopting the method of close reading of text and literature research.In terms of trauma theory,traumatic disorders include hyperarousal,intrusion,constriction,disconnection and so on.Furthermore,the recovery is an important part of trauma theory,which can be divided into five stages: rebuilding a healing relationship,establishment of safety,remembrance and mourning,reconnection as well as the restoration of commonality.With a deep understanding of the trauma and careful reading of full texts,this thesis reveals the symptoms of the protagonists’ trauma in Malamud’s short stories,explores the causes of trauma among underprivileged Jewish immigrants,and analyzes the efforts they made to recover from the trauma,as well as the reasons why some of them fail to make a recovery.This thesis consists of five chapters:The first chapter is introduction,which mainly presents Malamud’s life and his works,research questions and significance,literature review,theoretical framework and layout of the thesis.Chapter two to chapter four are the main body of the thesis.The second chapter explores the trauma symptoms of the protagonists by analyzing the texts of the short stories.They are mainly manifested as hyperarousal,intrusion,constriction,suicide and disconnection.Suicide is the extreme manifestation among those symptoms.The traumatic symptoms are not only independent,but also intersect with each another,which are complex and diverse.Chapter three discusses the causes of the characters’ trauma in short stories by combining historical and cultural factors,as well as Jewish identity.Among them,the main causes are the protagonist’s miserable living conditions,disharmonious interpersonal relationship,antisemitism and the loss of Jewish identity.In the fourth chapter,it mainly analyzes the efforts made by the characters to make a recovery,and the reasons why some characters fail to recover from the trauma.The process of trauma recovery can be divided into three stages,reconstructing the sense of safety,narrating the traumatic experiences,and rebuilding the sense of connection with others and community.The development of plots is limited in short stories,and the experiences of characters are mainly focused on a specific period so that the trauma can be recovered from at a certain stage instead of experiencing the above three complete stages.Furthermore,some protagonists hardly succeed in following critical stages of trauma treatment.Due to the lack of sense of security,no one to talk about the traumatic experience,and the loss of Jewish identity,they fail to make a recovery.The fifth chapter makes a conclusion of this thesis.By writing trauma,Malamud delineates the plight of the Jews and even the people at the lowest level of the social ladders.The success or failure of trauma recovery is closely related to the personal cognition of Jewish identity and culture.The loss of identity and strong antisemitism fundamentally hinder their recovery from trauma,resulting in the tragedy of life.In these short stories,the symptoms of trauma,the causes of it and results of trauma recovery are closely intertwined.According to the publication time,these stories can be divided into two stages,the first stage(1940-1963)and the second stage(1963-1973).As time goes on,the main causes of trauma in stories are disharmonious interpersonal relationship and antisemitism,and the number of protagonists who fail to recover from trauma increases gradually.This change reflects the growth of Malamud’s attitudes towards individuals’ life.After the protagonists experiencing trauma,the multiple results of their life are more reasonable than happy ending in the real world.It is also the process of gradual enrichment of Malamud’s life experience.Malamud,as a contemporary American Jewish writer,the Jewishness of his works lies in the characters’ moral merits and attitudes towards life.Suffering and spiritual redemption by overcoming it is the main theme of his works.Many of the protagonists in Malamud’s works,such as Yakov in The Fixer and Helen in The Assistant,have achieved spiritual growth in suffering.The application of trauma theory connects the trauma and suffering,which enriches the connotation of Malamud’s works,and provides reference for us to think about how to care for individuals and help the traumatized out of difficulties. |
