Trauma and Literature: Process Log 07

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Headers

• Chirag Mehta
• Trauma and Literature
• Prof. Martin J. Gliserman
• 09 Apr. 2003

Trauma and Literature: Process Log 07

Trauma Within Family:

In Chang Rae Lee's book, A Gesture Life, the lead character Doc Hata very strongly desires a 'successful' relationship between himself and everyone else around him. His extreme desire to be a good father, not by involving himself with his adopted daughter's daily life but rather by doing the so-called right things, ends up creating tension between both as she grows from a ten year old into a teenager. Living in the same house with other people is not a simple task. It is a commitment that almost everyone has to undertake, if not throughout their lives, then at least for the first eighteen to twenty years. Adjusting to people's expectations, habits, and temperaments is expected and failure to adjust often results in emotional torment. In A Thousand Acres, the three daughters grew up in their father's house and while one, Caroline, chose to pursue a legal career elsewhere, the other two daughters stayed with their father. As one reads the book, it becomes more and more apparent how deeply the lives of everyone around the father, have been impacted by him. The daughters Rose and Virginia cannot make even small decisions without first wondering what their father would think of it, let alone whether he would agree with them or not.

We think of the word 'slavery' as something very inhuman that the cruel overlords of the past enforced upon the poor innocent people. Yet what nobody notices is that living under someone else's shadow all your life is nothing short of legalized slavery. Every decision, thought, and idea has to be first approved by the 'master'. It becomes one's life-long ambition to please him/her, failing to do which results in rebuke, insults, and sometimes, physical abuse. While there is love and respect, the overriding force in such patriarchal dorms is blind obedience. Ginny would have to do anything her father said, though she very well knew he was wrong, just because he is the father and she is the daughter. Respecting parents and elders is a virtue, something Doc Hata practiced himself and expected vehemently of others, but it shoots off to the extreme in A Thousand Acres. The father left Caroline out of his will merely because she argued against his point-of-view and that too not very strongly. Life in those thousand acres meant one thing and one thing only - agree with Daddy no matter what you think. There was no second opinion. The one who had it, got cut off.

Living under such oppressive unanswerable patriarchs all your life, sacrificing all one's personal dreams, hopes, and ideas, just to keep the 'God' happy, is probably one of the most traumatic conditions that do not involve physical abuse. And yet society blames the one who wants to run away.