A Study Of Coetzee’s Trauma Writing

John Maxwell Coetzee is a famous white South African writer who was born in Cape Town,South Africa in 1940.Due to the writer’s special upbringing,the creation of his novels has always been filled with the observation and writing of trauma.Trauma is one of the common phenomena in modern human society,and exploring the trauma writing in Coetzee’s novels is of great significance for the study of his work.Coetzee’s trauma writing involves not only the trauma of the fictional characters,but also the trauma of the writer’s self.In Coetzee’s writing,the various characters in his novels struggle with trauma and expect healing.This thesis focuses on Coetzee’s novels,focusing on Boyhood,Youth,Summertime,Dusklands,Disgrace,Age of Iron and other works,based on psychological trauma theory,combined with feminism and postcolonial theories,to explore the trauma writing in Coetzee’s novels.This paper explores the reasons for Coetzee’s trauma writing,the basic types of trauma writing in Coetzee’s novel,and the value of trauma writing,and finally sorts out the significance of Coetzee’s trauma writing.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction,main text and conclusion.The introductory part mainly introduces Coetzee’s life experience and works,the reasons for the selection of topics and research significance,the current research status at home and abroad,the connotation of trauma and its theoretical development process.The text is divided into three main parts: the first chapter mainly combines relevant trauma theories and specific novel texts to explore the basic types of trauma writing in Coetzee’s novel,namely war trauma,racial trauma,and female trauma.The first section mainly takes Dusklands as the research object,draws on "neuroses" and other related theories,and analyzes the war trauma suffered by the protagonist Donn;The second section mainly takes works such as Age of Iron and Disgrace as the research objects,and analyzes the mental trauma of white intellectuals and the collective trauma of the black community in the novel;The third section focuses on the gender trauma of white women and the multiple traumas of black women.The second chapter mainly explores the reasons for Coetzee’s traumatic writing,that is,from the aspects of traumatic memories of war,the special historical and cultural context of South Africa,and the personal growth experience of individual writers.Chapter 3 explores the value of trauma writing in Coetzee’s novels.First,the characters in Coetzee’s novels are deeply traumatized by war and have not been healed,which has a warning effect;Second,in the face of racial trauma,Coetzee paved a path of atonement,forgiveness,and racial integration for the subject of trauma.Third,in the novel,Coetzee constructs a dialogue ethic of reconciliation to achieve reconciliation between blacks and whites.The epilogue mainly summarizes the significance of Coetzee’s trauma writing: first,the writer’s trauma writing covers a wide range of aspects,and he pays attention to the trauma of women,which is often overlooked;Second,Coetzee confronts the brutal truth of South Africa and subverts the grand narrative of history with his individual narrative;Third,Coetzee focuses on the lives of small people and individuals,and his traumatic writing reaches the depth of history,culture and other aspects.