The document provides context and discussion for trauma theory, including definitions of trauma from Freud, Cathy Caruth, and the American Psychiatric Association. It also summarizes key aspects of trauma theory according to Freud and Cathy Caruth, including how trauma can result in delayed or repeated responses due to the event not being fully experienced or assimilated at the time. Discussion topics are provided on trauma theory and works of literature.

1. {
EWRT 1C Class 22
back
short
watch
In each of these puzzles, a list of words is given. To solve the
puzzle, think of a single word that goes with each to form a
compound word (or word pair that functions as a compound
word). For example, if the given words are volley, field, and
bearing, then the answer would be ball, because the word ball can
be added to each of the other words to form volleyball, ball field,
and ball bearing.
blue
cake
cottage
stool
powder
ball

2. AGENDA
Trauma Theory
 Bloom
 Balaev
 Discussion: Rita Hayworth and
Shawshank Redemption
 Author Introduction:
 Franz Kafka

3. Your First
Group!
 Get into new teams
of four. (1-2
minutes)
 If you can’t find a
group, please raise
your hand.

4.  Trauma has attracted the attention of
many disciplines. The reason is easy to
understand for those of us today, who
have the historical knowledge of
violence of the twentieth century and the
experience of the ominous start of
twenty-first century.
Trauma Theory Review

5.  Freud referred to dreams as“the royal road to a knowledge of the
unconscious activities of the mind.”
 The World War I veterans plagued with PTSD puzzled Freud
because the literal images they encountered in dreams could not
be explained in terms of the dream theory he devised earlier in The
Interpretation of Dreams.
 What Freud once called “traumatic neurosis,” the American
Psychiatric Association in 1980 officially acknowledged and termed
as “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD), a concept significant to
trauma theory.
 The term “trauma theory” first appears in Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed
Experience (1996). The theory stems from her interpretation and
elaboration of Freud’s reflections on traumatic experiences in Beyond
the Pleasure Principle and Moses and Monotheism.
Freud and the birth of
Trauma Theory

6. Cathy Caruth defines PTSD as “a
response, sometimes delayed, to an
overwhelming event or events, which
takes the form of repeated, intrusive
hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or
behaviors stemming from the event [. .
.] [T]he event is not assimilated or
experienced fully at the time, but only
belatedly [. . .] To be traumatized is
precisely to be possessed by an
image or event.” (Caruth 3-5)
Cathy Caruth is a Cornell
Professor of English and German
Romanticism. She specializes in
trauma theory; psychoanalytic
theory. Unclaimed Experience:
Trauma, Narrative and History;
Empirical Truths and Critical
Fictions: Locke Wordsworth, Kant,
Freud.
From Cathy Caruth (ed.) (1995) 'Trauma
And Experience: Introduction’, Trauma:
Explorations in Memory.” Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

7. {
What are the effects
of trauma according
to Bloom?
Let me ask
you!

8. 1. The Fight-or-Flight
2. Learned Helplessness
3. Loss of “Volume Control”
4. Thinking Under Stress—Action Not Thought
5. Remembering Under Stress
6. Emotions and Trauma—Dissociation
7. Endorphins and Stress—Addiction to Trauma
8. Trauma Reenactment
9. Trauma and the Body
10. Victim to Victimizer
Effects of Trauma
Q: Are these trauma responses considered “healthy” or “unhealthy”
ways of coping with trauma?

9. { Why is literature so
important in trauma
theory?
Let me ask
you!

10. {
Why is literature so important in trauma theory?
Trauma theorists deem
literature important because
of its ability to accommodate
both the comprehensible and
the incomprehensible.
Literary language
simultaneously defies as well
as claims understanding, and
all the pioneer trauma
theorists—beginning with
Freud and including Cathy
Caruth and Shoshana
Felman—turned to literature
for theoretical support.
Literature can contain
knowing and not knowing,
the known and unknown,
the knowable and
unknowable all at once in
language, a medium that
itself oscillates between the
expressible and
inexpressible, the possible
and impossible.
Psychoanalysis, in its
extension to trauma theory,
makes use of this strange
nature of literature and its
medium.

11. Discuss trauma as it applies to any one character in
“Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.”
Use textual support to make a case that the
traumatic incident has long term ramifications.

12. From Bloom

13. 1. Q: Why is it necessary for the traumatized individual to seek to limit
the triggers to the bad experience – “emotional memory”- to begin the
process for healing? Is there an alternative method of treatment that
may be more effective than simply seeking to understand the source
of the trauma?
2. Q: Does the bias of one’s own trauma interfere with the analysis of the
trauma inflicted upon others? Is it possible than any explanation of a
person’s problems can be seen as projection by the examiner, and how
does someone establish credibility when analyzing the trauma of
others?
3. Q: Can learning about trauma theory and the different ways trauma
impacts behavior patterns help a traumatized individual recognize
their own damaging behaviors?
QHQ: Bloom

14. 1. Q: How can I fully contribute to and understand trauma theory if I
have never been through a traumatic experience?
2. Q: why are all our superheroes traumatized? Can you be a hero
without first being a victim?
3. Question: After reading Bloom’s essay on trauma, and how people
deal with repeated trauma, do you have any new perspectives on any
of the previous texts we have read?
QHQ: Bloom

15.  “Trauma, in my analysis, refers to a person's emotional
response to an overwhelming event that disrupts previous
ideas of an individual's sense of self and the standards by
which one evaluates society. The term "trauma novel"
refers to a work of fiction that conveys profound loss or
intense fear on individual or collective levels. A defining
feature of the trauma novel is the transformation of the self
ignited by an external, often terrifying experience, which
illuminates the process of coming to terms with the
dynamics of memory that inform the new perceptions of
the self and world.”
From Balaev

16.  The trauma novel conveys a diversity of extreme emotional
states through an assortment of narrative innovations, such
as landscape imagery, temporal fissures, silence, or narrative
omission--the withholding of graphic, visceral traumatic
detail. Authors employ a nonlinear plot or disruptive
temporal sequences to emphasize mental confusion, chaos,
or contemplation as a response to the experience. The
narrative strategy of silence may create a "gap" in time or
feeling that allows the reader to imagine what might or
could have happened to the protagonist, thereby
broadening the meaning and effects of the experience.
From Balaev

17. 1. Q: What does this sentence mean, “In addition, blurring the distinction
between absence and loss would lead to the view that both victim and
perpetrator maintain the same relationship to a traumatic experience
and exhibit the same responses” (3)? In any way, is this sentence trying
to justify the perpetrator?
2. “Thus, the “speakability” of traumatic experience is strongly influenced
by cultural models in the novel that identify the most important aspects
to remember. This perspective reminds us that the “unspeakability” of
trauma claimed by so many literary critics today can be understood less
as an epistemological conundrum or neurobiological fact, but more as
an outcome of cultural values and ideologies” (Balaev 7) Q: Why isn’t
the “unspeakability of trauma” an epistemological conundrum?
3. Q: How can literature shape the way groups of people experience
trauma?
4. Q: Trauma theory allows us to better understand others, but can finding
out about others help us better understand ourselves?
QHQ: Balaev

18. QHQ: Balaev
1. Q: Does omitting details or information in a trauma novel give a
deeper meaning to the work?
2. Q: In literature when we convey trauma, we often find that the
details are left out, and only a skeleton description of the trauma
itself is included, causing the reader to “fill in the details” with their
own imagination and experiences. How is this similar to amnesia
and dissociation effects that typically result from a trauma?
3. Q: “When we need to recall something, we go into the appropriate
category and retrieve the information we need. But under conditions
of extreme stress, our memory works in a different way” (5). Based
on this information, can memory go away in order to survive?

19. Epistemology and Ontology are branches of philosophy and are probably
the most complex terms that one might come across in that field. They are both
important elements of the philosophy of knowledge. Though they overlap, they
have clear distinctions: epistemology is about the way we know things when
ontology is about what things are.
Ontology is about describing things and their relationships to answer the
question "What is it?" while epistemology's personal concern is to investigate
the ways that leads you to think that.
Imagine the ontology saying "This is that, then the epistemology will answer :
"How can you be so sure of what it is if you don't even know how you know it?”
The overlap of those two questions are in fact the origin of metaphysics. The
question: "Are things really like this or is that just the way I see them?" will always
be a fruitful one.
Not a Test Slide

20. Discuss trauma as it applies to any one character in “Rita Hayworth
and the Shawshank Redemption.” Use textual support to make a case
that the traumatic incident has long term ramifications.
“He always fought them, that’s what I remember. He knew, I guess, that if you let them
have at you even once without fighting, it got that much easier to let them have their
way without fighting next time. […]” (20). […]Andy is a psychologically resilient man.
For him to not only recognize the detrimental effects of numbing emotional responses,
but to also repeatedly execute a seemingly futile countermeasure of fighting back
despite failing to prevent his rape on numerous occasions, Andy displays the strength
of his resilience in the face of the sudden confusing transition into a new cruel world,
the world of Shawshank prison.
In Bloom’s “Trauma Theory Abbreviated”, the author present a potential solution to
the described trauma effects: “Creating Sanctuary refers to the process involved in
creating safe environments that promote healing and sustain human growth, learning,
and health” (12). […] I believe that Andy persistently writes his letters [to the senate]
with the intention of creating a comforting atmosphere to move on from the
experiences of rape and start the process of mental healing. […] His motive for
tirelessly involving himself in improving other people’s lives is directly influenced by
his desire to create a safe space for his recovery.
ANDY

21. Andy enjoys hobbies at Shawshank such as rock carving, becoming the
librarian and digging a hole to escape. One might be mistaken in thinking that
Andy has settled into life at Shawshank and has not been traumatized as a
result of his wrongful conviction. This is not the case. Andy is internalizing the
trauma, and it only becomes obvious how much his wrongful conviction has
affected him when Tommy tells Andy how his old cellmate, “a man named
Elwood Blatch” (43) confessed to him of killing a golf pro and his lover. The
same golf pro, and the same woman that Andy is in prison for. Andy goes to
the prison warden and tells him, but the warden will have none of this, and
Andy gets mad. The guards “dragged Andy away, totally out of control now,
still screaming at the warden; Chester said you could hear him even after the
door was shut: ‘it’s my life! It’s my life, don’t you understand it’s my life?’” (49).
In this moment it becomes apparent how much prison is affecting Andy, and
how much he really want’s to get out. So much so that Andy has been digging a
hole to get out of prison the whole time. Throughout Andy’s prison sentence he
dreams of life “Down in Mexico… by the beach” (57). The trauma of wrongful
imprisonment has had a lasting effect on Andy, and though not always
apparent, his longing to get out is always there.
ANDY

22. More Andy
Before we even meet Andy, he has suffered the humiliation of
discovering his wife’s infidelity. We learn that “he told the bartender
that he was going up to Glenn Quentin’s house and he, the bartender,
could ‘read about the rest of it in the papers.'” Andy’s initial reaction is
to lash out wildly, getting very drunk and threatening to exact revenge
on his wife’s lover. We learn that he later continued drinking, as the
police found another two empty quart bottles of beer near the victim’s
house, so the self-destructive reaction continued for some time. What is
interesting to note is that, after the violent emotional outbursts and
reactions, when he was in court “Andy Dufresne took the stand in his
own defense and told his story calmly, coolly, and dispassionately.”
This indicates that, even then, Andy had begun to dissociate from the
events in an effort to protect himself from the pain of this trauma.

23. Discuss trauma as it applies to any one character in “Rita Hayworth
and the Shawshank Redemption.” Use textual support to make a case
that the traumatic incident has long term ramifications.
In Michelle Balaev’s “Trends in Literary Trauma
Theory,” she states that: “ The narrative strategy of
silence may create a “gap” in time or feeling that
allows the reader to imagine what might or could
have happened to the protagonist, thereby
broadening the meaning and effects of the
experience.” The evidence of this in Red’s case is
clear because he silences his own experience by
interpreting it through other characters
Red, experiences sexual trauma and dissociation due to his horrible experience
with the Sisters. They sexually assault him in the same way they do Andy, but
he can’t understand it through his own terms, so he speaks through the
protagonist’s experience: “It rips you up some, but not bad-am I speaking from
personal experience, you ask?-I only wish I weren’t. You bleed for awhile” (18).
This short passage is the only memory we see of Red’s experience, and so we
see a dissociation in the sense that Red never explains himself through explicit
details. The details are only in Andy’s story.
RED

24. RED
In King’s short story Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption we see
Red as a traumatized man due to the institution of prison. Red displays learned
helplessness throughout the story claiming that he could not survive on the
outside: “I couldn’t do it,” I said. “I couldn’t get along on the outside. I’m what
they call an institutional man now.” The helplessness of Red situation is the
exact same type of helplessness researchers found in animal cases. Blooms
paper states that repetition of trauma that leaves the subject feeling helpless,
“can cause changes in the animal’s ability to recognize and escape from danger
so that once the animal becomes accustomed to trauma, it fails to try and
escape from danger.” The prison offers this feel of helplessness, it is said that
”First-timers usually have a hard time adjusting to the confinement of prison
life. They get screw-fever. Sometimes they have to be hauled down to the
infirmary and sedated a couple of times before they get on the beam.” (74) and
while we don’t know that this was Red’s reaction, we know that it was a
common reaction for this environment.

25. Byron
Hadley
He’s the bully of the story and represents the corruption that exists in
the prison, but as many of us know, people who are bullies behave
that way due to underlying psychological issues. He is a character that
is addicted to power, and he obtains that power by bullying and
threatening the prisoners. One quote that shows Byron Hadley’s need
for power in control is, “Double cross me? Mr. Hotshot banker, if she
ate her way through a boxcar of Ex-Lax, she wouldn’t dare fart unless I
gave her the nod” (31). The way he speaks of his wife shows that he’s
not just a bully towards the prisoners, but he’s like that at home too
which further shows that his behavior is due to issues within himself.
His treatment towards his co-workers is yet another indication that
Hadley is damaged, when his co-worker Mert mocks Andy and
Hadley’s response is to angrily tell him to “shut his friggin trap”(30),
showing that he really just doesn’t have respect to anyone around him
regardless of who they are. Hadley’s behavior is most likely a result of
trauma he experienced in his childhood, he could’ve had bullies at
school or been bullied by controlling and abusive family members,
which would make him feel like in order to prevent being treated like
that again he has to be the one to maintain control over the people
around him. Either way, his behavior indicates that he had some abuse
at some point in his life.

26.  In spite of Norton’s hypocrisy, Norton is the guy who loses the most
at the end of the story. He is traumatized by Andy’s escape. That
miracle breaks down Norton’s mental: “Three months after that
memorable day, Warden Norton resigned. He was a broken man, it
gives me great pleasure to report.” He loses everything not just
money, but his honor as well. The word “broken” has two meanings
in here. He is financially broken, and he is mentally broken as well.
“The spring was gone from his step.” Norton’s good days are gone.
“On his last day he shuffled act with his head down like an old con
shuffling down to the infirmary for his codeine pills.” He is not the
big cheese of his own prison anymore. Red continues with
explaining his ending: “Sam Norton is down there in Eliot now,
attending services at the Baptist church every Sunday, and
wondering how the hell Andy Dufresne ever could have gotten the
better of him” (72). Now, Norton tries to rehab his own mind from
God, but his trauma blinds him.
Warden Norton’s Trauma

27. Andy’s character in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank uses the unconscious
mechanisms of displacement to take out his emotions regarding his rape. Andy
started attacking his cell walls after he was raped by the sisters; “The first time
for him was in the shower less than three days after he joined our happy
Shawshank family” and It is was after this encounter that Andy buys a poster
of Rita Hayworth, to cover up the damage he is doing to his wall. This
unconscious reaction to his rape by the sisters forms a temporary outlet for his
emotions and in using the provocative image of Rita Hayworth as a facade to
cover this damage one could state that this is yet another unconscious attempt
in repressing the event. Repeatedly attacking the wall covered with a
provocative image with a phallic object the imager seems rather violent “in the
hole up to his waist with Raquel Welch hanging down over his ass” Andy’s
unconscious displacement may have created this situation that is as close to
rape as his morals would allow, giving him power over his sexuality in an
environment which has taken that power away from him.
Using a psychoanalytic lens, do a character profile
of any one character in “Rita Hayworth and
Shawshank Redemption.”

28. Author: Franz Kafka
 Austrian Writer ( 1883 - 1924 )

29. Brief Biography
 Kafka was born in Prague, a large provincial
capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that
was home to many Czechs, some Germans, and
a lesser number of German-cultured, German-
speaking Jews. His father, Hermann Kafka, of
humble rural origin, was a hard-working, hard-
driving, successful merchant. His mother
tongue was Czech, but he spoke German,
correctly seeing the language as an important
card to be played in the contest for social and
economic mobility and security.

30.  As a youngster, Kafka, like his father, has no more than the most
perfunctory relationship with Judaism. He dutifully memorized what
was necessary for his bar mitzvah, but he was already an atheist
 Writing early became an issue in the antagonism between Kafka and
his father; the latter continued to disdain writing as an unworthy
occupation long after Kafka became a published author.
 He received his doctorate in law on 18 June 1907.
 Kafka found a new job with the Workers' Accident Insurance
Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. He worked there until he
retired in 1922.
 In August 1914 the thirty-one-year-old Kafka, having completed the
novella In der Strafkolonie (1919; translated as "In the Penal Colony,"
1941) and begun working on the novel Der Prozeß (1925; translated as
The Trial, 1937), finally moved out of his parents' home.
 He suffered a series of failed engagements. Much of Kafka's personal
struggles, in romance and other relationships, came, he believed, in
part from his complicated relationship with his father.
 After horrible suffering, he died on 3 June 1924 of tuberculosis of the
larynx.

31. Homework
Begin The Metamorphosis
(Read Chapter 1)
Bring: Two complete
copies of your draft (At
least 4 pages) for an in-
class writing workshop