Published Online:March 2025
Product Name:The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJES100325
DOI:10.71329/IUPJES/2025.20.1.118-128
Author Name:Ananya Chand
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Arts and Humanities
Download Format:PDF
Pages:118-128
This paper delves into the intricate interplay between trauma and memory in 21st-century American fiction, with a specific focus on Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (2013) and Nathan Hill’s The Nix (2016). Through a comparative analysis of these novels, the study explores how characters navigate the labyrinthine complexities of trauma and its impact on memory, identity, and narrative construction. Grounded in the theoretical framework of Dan P McAdams’ Narrative Identity Theory, the study employs a rigorous interdisciplinary approach, synthesizing textual analysis with theoretical inquiry to illuminate the nuanced dynamics at play within the selected texts. The paper examines how trauma disrupts and reshapes memory, leading to fragmented recollections, haunting flashbacks, and the blurring of past and present. Additionally, it investigates how memory serves as a tool for both coping with and perpetuating trauma, shaping characters’ perceptions of themselves and the world around them.
A decade in and the twenty-first century does not disappoint.... And literature—no longer satisfied with reproducing the disaffected irony and language games that caused readers to characterize postmodern literature as heartless and meaningless—makes its own vehement demand to be read and understood differently (Holland, 2013, p. 1).