A Study on the Psycho-pathological Sign of Trauma in the Text of Jamaica Kincaid’s Novel, Lucy

Abstract

Jamaica Kincaid was the writer who tried hard to embrace the unique and unavoidable traumatic aspects of people who have lived their life in helpless and passive. When it is looked in the category of social and political senses, these negative tendencies are clearly appeared in the third world people or black people, who had a very unstable and immigrant life under colonization or slavery. Both of them show some traumatic symptoms which are the psychological occurrence appearing on the people who had suffered from social, cultural and political oppression of society. Once trauma is formed, it recurs repetitively and intermittently. Its unexpected intervention of life prevents them keeping their life normal and their identity. In 『Lucy』, Kincaid embodied these pathological symptoms through Lucy’s life journey based on her diverse experiences in a new land. This study will examine the fundamental reason of trauma dominating the social and political scheme based on Jamaica Kincaid’s novel, Lucy in the viewpoint of Herman Judith’s theory. For this research, it will analyze the symbolic objects stimulating Lucy’s trauma in the structure of society.