earticle

영어

This study analyzes The Joy Luck Club focusing on the trope of wound/scar and the function of narrative in recovery from trauma. The stories told by the mothers are colored by their traumatic past experiences in Old China, and the traumatic past affects the present lives of these mothers and daughters in various aspects. In this light, “The Scar” sets the tone of the novel by associating a burn accident with a psychological wound and trauma, and the story of Ying-ying and Lena can be read as a case study of a trauma, which reveals how the trauma paralyzes its victim into a ghost and how the traumatized mother affects the life of her daughter. Typical PTSD symptoms such as hyperarousal, intrusion and constriction haunt the life of Ying-ying, and Lena falls victim to her mother’s dissociated paralysis. Recovery from the trauma requires a painful process of penetrating the numb and distorted views of one’s own identity and the world into the traumatic memory and making one’s own narrative out of it. The will to accomplish this agonizing task is derived from the mothers’ love toward their daughters, and the Joy Luck Club functions as a solidarity of women who suffer together in the androcentric society and support and comfort each other in their struggles to overcome their ‘unspeakable tragedies.’