Trauma and Homelessnessin Emma Donnoghue’s Room (2010)

Abstract

This study analyzes trauma in Room (2010) . By the Irish – Canadian novelist Emma Donoghue and looks into its causes and impacts on the characters. It delves into the writer’s depiction of a traumatic representation of crucial events and how they impact the characters psychologically and existentially. By relaying on a number of theories and concepts including Cathy Caruth’s Trauma and the Possibility of History, Slavoj Zizek’s Violence, Sigmund Freud’s “Morning and Melancholia”, and Martin Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking.” This paper aims at analyzing how Donoghue demonstrates the psychological aspects of trauma and how it may lead to serious existential crisis of belonging and dwelling in the world. The study concludes that trauma plays an important role in shaping the characters’ identities and creates an issue of finding one’s place in the world.