Le cicatrici del trauma nell'epoca contemporanea

This thesis consists of a literary review of the meaning of trauma, the impact that it has on an individual and on the people who are part of his or her existence. To study trauma the first instinct is to focus exclusively on medicine and psychology; however, literature has a strong connection with the theme and the following study aims at comprehending the literary treatment of trauma and scars in particular. I analyze the different ways contemporary novels like John Steinbeck's East of Eden (1952), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), and Susan Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin (2010) deal with psychical trauma and scarring the body, and how they affect the relation with the external world. Traumatized people always have to deal with their past and the memories and the tensions that resurface a specific painful moment that is difficult to tell. Language becomes a problem while dealing with trauma. It is at this moment that scars play a crucial role, as they help to understand the story hidden inside because the body becomes the place of writing the “unspeakable”. Recovery is part of the therapy to heal, however, the common outcome is that victims have to live with trauma for the rest of their lives. They can replace the past reality with a new one but the past cannot be fully erased and forgotten: it can be understood. Scars can be read by those who had similar experiences or know the reason behind the wound. An element that strikes the attention is the fact that usually trauma involves more than just one generation in the familiar context, even if the new generations did not experience it. The characters of the three literary texts I studied, are a part of marginalized groups that were silenced throughout the years, and present scars in different parts of the body and I try to focus on their meaning in the context of the Christian tradition, American slavery, and the Palestinian-Israeli war. My focus on physical scars moves away from the idea that the wound of the mind is the only one that has an importance.