Memory, identity and unspeakability in trauma narration of selected novels by Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng
The literary canon of trauma novels has focused chiefly on the characters’ psychological, cultural, and postcolonial contexts. However, more research is required on narrative ways to represent traumatic memory, identity, and reconstruction of identity through modes of narration. Contemporary Chin...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | en |
| Published: |
2023
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/124006/1/124006.pdf http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/124006/ https://ethesis.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/18749 |
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| Summary: | The literary canon of trauma novels has focused chiefly on the characters’
psychological, cultural, and postcolonial contexts. However, more research is
required on narrative ways to represent traumatic memory, identity, and
reconstruction of identity through modes of narration. Contemporary Chinese
Malaysian novelists Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng portray the psychological
states of minority communities, especially Chinese Malayans, during the colonial
period from the 1940s to the 1960s. Past research on Tash Aw and Tan Twan
Eng’s works has mainly focused on aspects such as transculturation, colonial
concepts of identity, and aestheticism of memory. Herein, my thesis attempts to
fill in the gap by examining how trauma is represented by narrative techniques
in selected texts and how narration plays an integral role in negotiating trauma.
My central argument is that narration plays a crucial role in representing and
healing trauma in Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng’s novels. Cathy Caruth’s
conception of trauma indicates the symptoms as belatedness and repetition of
intrusive memories. Toolan’s time and space are conducive to representing such
nonlinear and circular sequences caused by trauma. Cathy Caruth’s expression
of “blow to the mind” results in a dissociative identity that is embodied by extreme
long-lasting emotions, such as numbness, rage, depression, loss, and
helplessness. Toolan’s internal focalization and Hogan’s affective narration are
useful to show the change of emotions reflecting the state of identity. Cathy
Caruth’s “collapse of understanding” leading to further research on Anne
Whitehead’s “absence of narrative capacity” will be applied as a way to
understand protagonists’ unspeakability in the selected novels. Anne
Whitehead’s conversion of traumatic memory into narrative memory represents
the process of recovery from trauma. Astril Erll’s modes of whole- text narration
will be used to analyze the specific healing process. I analyze Tash Aw’s The
Harmony Silk Factory (2005), Map of the Invisible World (2009) and Tan Twan
Eng’s The Gift of Rain (2007) and The Garden of Evening Mists (2012) to show
how these works demonstrate trauma symptoms through narrative arrangement
and healing of trauma through modes of narration. My thesis shows that a
special arrangement of narration is a way of representing the symptoms of
trauma. First, discontinuous and circular temporal-spatial structures show the
belatedness and repetition of trauma experienced by protagonists in the
selected novels. Second, the internal-focalized uneven negative emotions reflect
the characters’ dissociative identity. My thesis finally points out that the shift from
negative emotion to positive emotion proves a Yin-Yang concept of the healing
process of trauma, which is the result of the success of telling through modes of
narration both of whole text and sub-narrative. However, the failure to tell may
result in a constant struggle in the torture of trauma. To conclude this study, I
reiterate that narration plays a crucial role in trauma. At the same time, Tash Aw
and Tan Twan Eng reach a consensus on articulating relationships between
trauma and narration. |
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