LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 18:7 July 2018
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
         Dr. S. Chelliah, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Diasporic Life in the Novel
What Lies Between Us by Nayomi Munaweera

Harine G., M.Phil. Scholar


Courtesy: https://www.amazon.com/What-Lies-Between-Us-Novel/dp/1250118174

Abstract

Life as Diaspora is not always a blissful one, the fresh and fragile memories of home land constantly agitating the life of immigrants. In such case, if an individual with a haunting past starts her adulthood as an immigrant, then the life become worse. This article focuses and follows the life of a child in Sri Lanka to her adulthood in America who is continuously haunted by her past childhood memories and it also points out her Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] through a psychological analysis of the novel What Lies Between Us by a Sri Lankan American novelist Nayomi Munaweera. This article further throws light on the difficulties of a young girl with PTSD to fit into a new culture and identity to which she does not belong to. This kind of exploration about the life of Diaspora and effects of PTSD is essential to understand the sufferings and struggles of those alienated group which long for recognition.

Baby Madame

Fiction performs a major role in cultivating the varied emotions of humans into the minds and hearts of the readers from different cultures and nations. Contemporary novelists explore the theme of trauma to a greater extent in their works. Trauma is a part of every human life; the stain and pain of a traumatic experience remains fresh within the deepest layer of hearts. The childhood trauma continues its infection throughout the life time of the child. The diasporic life of a young girl with a terrible childhood trauma is analysed psychologically in this article. A Sinhala family in Sri Lanka, with a typical father, a mother with mood swings and an innocent child who longs for mother’s warmth spends most of her time with her keepers of childhood Samson and Sita. Our eight-year-old protagonist enjoys her childhood with the gardener Samson who accompanies her in all her childhood mischief; Samson calls her as Baby Madame. The life of Baby Madame was pleasant until she experiences a sexual assault in the room of Samson. This incident shattered her happiness; she hesitated to open this matter to her parents because she felt this news might make her mom move out of home. She missed the secured feeling, face of Samson haunted her. When she turns into age, she was restricted to go out of room. In such isolation her sense of fear towards Samson increased. Her life went upside down after the doubtful death of her father. Her father was drowned in the flood and Samson was missing from that day. Due to this tense situation in the family our protagonist and her mother moves to USA to Malini aunt’s house where she grows into an adult and then into a mother. The effect of childhood trauma has poisoned her life and forced her to commit an unforgivable crime.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Harine G., M.Phil. Scholar
Department of English
PSG College of Arts and Science
Coimbatore
haruganesan@gmail.com

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