Trauma and PTSD in the lens of Cathy Caruth: A Parallel Reading on Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys and Preeti Shenoy’s Life is What you Make it

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S. Magishavarthini, S. Ramya Niranjani

Abstract

The monitoring of one's mental health should be given the same amount of attention as one's physical health. One example of a problem that might arise with a person's mental health as a result of a traumatic event in their life is psychological trauma. The aftermath of a traumatic experience is contingent upon the degree of sensitivity of the person. Internal and external elements, such as despair, fear, guilty conscience, and the importance of friends and family in a person's life all have a part in determining whether or not that person may develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (PTSD). The aftermath of post-traumatic stress disorder can range from relatively minor emotional upheaval to an increased risk of suicide. The protagonists in Elizabeth Strout's book The Burgess Boys (2013) suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the horrible experiences that occurred throughout their lives. In a related manner, the Indian writer Preeti Shenoy, in her work of fiction titled Life is What you Make it (2011), draws attention to the psychological pain that her main character, Ankita Sharma, goes through. The characters from a selection of books are used in this article to study the consequences of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study is based on the theoretical postulations of American Trauma theorist Cathy Caruth.

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