Psychological and Cultural Treatment of Traumatized Subject(s): Reading Laleh Khadivi’s The Walking in Terms of Theories of Trauma

Abstract

The present study aims to scrutinize the concept of trauma in Laleh khadivi’s work entitled, The Walking. The objective of the study is to examine how Khadivi’s work can be read through theories of trauma. The Freudian notion of trauma focuses on the remaining psychological wounds on subjects’ identity while Alexander’s concept, cultural trauma, concentrates on the cultural outcome of a horrendous event at the collective level. Traumas are not solely private psychological experiences and are restricted to one solitude individual as they can expose themselves as collective experiences. Literary works are valuable properties picturing the results and outcomes of trauma both at its individual and collective level. In the current paper, concepts related to traumas will be defined to examine the characters in Khadivi’s novel. The novel provides a set of chronological events that happened to a minority group during the Iranian revolution. The author chooses her characters of Iranians of Kurdish immigrants. The Walking, reminds us of events happening during 1976 in Iran, after The Islamic Revolution. The article will delineate that characters are psychologically traumatized after the revolution in Iran as well as experiencing cultural trauma during the twentieth century.