The Conflict of Recalling Traumatic Memories in Mariette Kalinowski's "The Train"

Abstract

Traumatic experiences are characterized by its prelinguistic tendency.  War fiction, however, refutes this statement when it reflects on the components of war so as to bear witness to its overwhelming nature as well as its ambiguous realities.  Recalling the traumatic wounds of war, in this regard, is a testimonial avenue grounded on the desires of its narrators to be transformed from the confined scope of individuality  into a more collective one. Written on the background of 2003 Iraq War, Mariette Kalinowski's "The Train" represents war's aftermath and the difficulty soldiers faced in adhering to ordinary life after being home. The conflict is a psychological one; it is shaped within the consciousness of a  female soldier  whose traumatized memory struggles against the ghost of past that haunts present. The study argues that Mariette Kalinowski's "The Train” follows the traumatized consciousness of an American veteran whose narrative line is  marked by fragmentation, nonlinear plot, and the fluctuation between the past and the present.  It also argues that the story itself is a testimonial narrative that aims at recordings individual suffering and thus placing it within a collective framework that  motivates solidarity among wounded victims. The study relies on the psychological and literary aspects of trauma theory. It significantly draws on Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experiences, Ann Whitehead Trauma Fiction, Shoshana Felman's Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, and other theorists in the field of trauma theory.