Recurrent Proceedings of Distress: The Psychological trauma of a Teenager in Elie Wiesel’s “The Night”

Abstract

Trauma studies was inveterate in the early 2000s as a critical study which scrutinize the facet of the consequences on how literature deals with the outcome of personal trauma and the resilience that leads. Psychological Trauma vandalize the peace and harmony of psyche that was followed by the acquaintance of series of traumatic events. Sigmund Freud inaugurated Trauma theory initially with the notion of addressing sexual violence such as rape, battering, incest, considering the female as a focal point as it advanced to the next level of the traumatic psychic scars inflicted by the tortures, genocide in regards to the holocaust. The shock and the stressors of the incident pave way for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which make the victim arduous to cope up with daily life make them undergo abnormal activities namely sleepless nights, derealization, anxiety disorder, dissociative amnesia etc. In the Memoir, ‘The Night’ by Elie Wiesel, narrated the traumas of a young protagonist named Eliezer, an Orthodox Jewish teenager who undergone traumatic experience, because of witnessing ill treatment and being a prisoner in a Nazi German concentration camp. He was enforced to go on for days in the absence of the fundamental necessities which are needed for a human to survive. Those refusals held back his will to strive and left him traumatic that he ceased to response for the happenings he witnessed. His change from being a normal boy who was steadfast to religion, how shattered he has become after receiving the recurring cruel punishments and being a victim to the inhumane behaviour is noticeable.