‘My Memory Gropes in Search of Details’: Memory, Narrative, and ‘Founding Traumas’ in John Banville's The Sea

Abstract

Many of John Banville's novels engage issues of loss, memory, and identity, but The Sea provides the most comprehensive portrait of traumatic loss in his canon. Protagonist Max Morden presents a textbook example of one who has experienced significant trauma. His fragmented, unreliable memories; his dissociated affect and emotional alienation; his self-destructive behaviours; and his obsessive recourse to the past all reflect typical manifestations of emotional and/or psychological distress and the workings of traumatic memory. By tracing Morden's experience of trauma and its narrative remediation, The Sea also replicates the frustrating and often painful process of identity reconstruction pursued by the traumatized. In this way, the narrative is not only a reflection on identity, trauma, and loss, but also a model of the possibility of healing from a traumatic past.