The poems presented in this paper demonstrate the presence of trauma in poetry through their use of stylistic devices, tone and atmosphere. Thus, this paper aims to invalidate and criticise Caruth’s approach to the unrepresentability of trauma by investigating three poems: two poems were written by war veterans, previously deployed in Afghanistan, and one was written by a veteran’s daughter to prove the literal representability of trauma. A close reading of the stylistic devices, tone and created atmosphere emphasises the possibilities that poets must present their trauma through literature. Lastly, the analysis of Olivia Hill’s poem reflects on the trauma perception from a different angle – namely, from outside the traumatised mind.
Additionally, it underscores the effects that parental traumatic experiences have on children. ‘Trauma forces the self into hiding, and while the sensory manifold keeps “recording” sights, sounds, smells and feelings, the brain fails to work them through. The videographer leaves, but the tape keeps running’. This image, provided by Boston University’s Joshua Pederson in his paper on challenging literary trauma theorists, reflects one perspective of the nature of trauma that is shared by many scholars and psychologists around the world. Cathy Caruth’s 1996 Unclaimed Experience and Trauma: Explorations in Memory present the essential elements of trauma discourse, heavily relying on Freudian theories.
Her definition of trauma is based on the claim that trauma victims suffer physical injury, followed by belated symptoms without causal relationship to the preceding injury that cannot be reconciled with one another. Caruth also emphasises the nature of traumatic recollection being ‘largely inaccessible to conscious recall and control’ because of its irrevocably damaging nature. Furthermore, the failure to combine the wish to understand past events relived through trauma and the inability to comprehend them underlines the linguistic abnormality of trauma.
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- Anonym (Autor), 2021, Trauma in Poems of Major Stewart Hill and Captain James Jeffrey. An Attempt to Devitalise Cathy Caruth’s "Unrepresentability Claim", Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1239698
