earticle

영어

This paper examines the Nigerian American writer Chris Abani’s novella Song for Night (2007) using Cathy Caruth’s theoretical texts on trauma studies, Unclaimed Experience (1996) and Literature in the Ashes of History (2013) where she develops Freud’s studies on dream works. A close reading of Song for Night brings to mind the questions of how an innocent child becomes a soldier, what he experiences on the battlefield, how he suffers from haunting memories of trauma, and, finally, whether he can recover from post-traumatic stress disorder, and if yes, how he should be treated. These endless questions reflect the difficulty of the studies of a child soldier’s trauma represented in war narratives. To back up the use of Westernoriented theories of Caruth and Freud, I bring in Alcinda Honwana’s text Child Soldiers in Africa (2006) which discusses specific case studies in Angola and Mozambique that helps to understand the necessity of the local level of healing processes to effectively heal the wounded and traumatized African child soldiers. The latter part of this essay will be devoted to presenting how communal healing, listening, and responding to the crying voices resulting from violence are vital in the treatment of African child soldiers.