Writing Trauma as a Healing Experience:

Abstract

This study focuses on the ability of the act of writing trauma to heal its wounds. Many writers use fiction to recover from their past trauma and free their negative emotions. Among these writers, one can mention the American writer Tim O’Brien whose writings embody therapeutic strategies. His collection of short stories, The Things They Carried (1990), is very suitable to the theme since it is a narrative that tells O’Brien’s experience in the Vietnam War. In his works, O’Brien shows how he uses his imagination to let go of the trauma of war. This research draws on Sigmund Freud and Cathy Caruth’s theories of trauma to examine the impact of writing traumatic experience on the healing process. The first chapter deals with trauma theory with the representation of trauma in some literary works. Moreover, the second chapter analyzes war trauma in the short story entitled “The Man I Killed”. It explores war trauma and sheds light on the Vietnam War trauma. It discusses trauma, shock, and guilt that the veterans experience in the Vietnam War. The third chapter deals with the meaning of death in the short story named “The Lives of The Dead”, by emphasizing the impact of writing trauma in translating the uncomprehended unspeakability and the silence of war trauma.