Trauma as a Provocative Pattern in Restoring and Rebuilding the Identities of Characters in Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge
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Abstract
The current paper attempts to identify the theoretical aspects of the post-traumatic stress disorder upon the characters in Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge. It endeavors to examine the characters’ possibilities to restore their identities by remembering their past myths and homelands. Throughout analyzing the thematic and formal representations of experiences of the war trauma, it raises the questions of whether those traumatized individuals can formulate their personalities to incorporate to the new homeland. It examines the individuals’ behaviors that are portrayed throughout the process of digressive narration to explore the effect of the traumatic experiences of war upon their personalities, and recognize their different responding. It aims at adopting specific cultural methods to reconstruct the characters’ personalities in their conformation of trauma and re-building new identities by acclimating new language and values.
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