The Traumatic Analysis Of Mitch Albom’s Fictions From The Perspective Of Spatial Narrative

Since the birth of human beings,trauma has been closely associated with human life,and the theme of trauma is one of the unchanging subjects of literary works.Mitch Albom,a renowned American columnist and best-selling author,writes mostly about birth,aging,disease,and death,exploring the trauma that people suffered in daily life and their healing path,with the author’s humanistic concern and desire to write hope reflected between the lines.Because of the trauma writing in Albom’s novels presents the obvious spatial dimension,taking his three most representative works(The Five People You Meet in Heaven,For One More Day,The Next Person You Meet in Heaven)as examples,this paper adopts the spatial theory proposed by Gabriel Zoran to explore Albom’s trauma narratives and the secret behind his writing.These three follow a similar plot line,telling the story of the protagonists’ journey of mental recovery after an accidental death.Therefore,these three novels have been studied as a whole,in order to analyze the role of spatial narrative in novel’s trauma writing from three levels: the topographical structure as trauma representation,the chronotopic structure as healing writing and textual structure as the exploration of what’s behind the trauma healing.Considering the value placed on the reader’s role in Zoran’s theory,the reader’s mental journey of interacting with the text and achieving recovery during the reading process is then explored.Through study,it is found that in these three novels,there paints the convalescent road of the protagonists which under the surface of magical journey,that is,they finally grow from the trauma after facing the trauma and reconciling with the past.The topographical structure constructs the traumatic symptoms and causes of the protagonists,who have the hidden desire for a cure.The chronotopic structure writes the protagonists’ axis of healing where they remember and mourn in a safe environment,and ultimately rebuilding the loss due to past trauma.The textual structure focuses on exploring the patterns of verbal organization behind trauma writing in the novel.Meanwhile,the spatial pattern which compose these three levels of spatial structure is the product of structured meanings,and will be perceived together by the readers in the process of reading.As the co-creators of the novel,readers read with their healing fantasies fulfilled and then return to intellectual interpretation,seeking the meaning of the text and thus,finding their own healing path in modern society,so that trauma writing’s social function to enlighten people can be realized.