The Dark Underside of 9/11 in Ken Kalfus's A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (2007) by

Abstract

The eventual attacks of 9/11in America, on The World Trade Center at Ground Zero, had changed the world and brought disastrous problems to a lot of civilians. Many people lost their lives; others were traumatized and suffered a disordered life. The disastrous event revealed the hidden aspects of the States and its assistants-the soldiers and copes. Studying the relationship between the psyche of individuals and their outside world is the core of this paper. The project investigates the reasons behind acting out trauma and its impact on individuals and society. The sociocultural approach applied helps in examining the behavior of the individuals through their reactions to the event of 9/11. Ken Kalfus's A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (2007), is analyzed according to the psychologist, Cathy Caruth's trauma theory and the sociologist, Kia Erikson's theory of cultural trauma. The novel deals with both kinds of trauma; psychic and cultural. It examines the behavior of the traumatized couple, Marshall and Joyce, lived a rather miserable and too hard and harsh life because of terrorism. They finally separate from each other uncaring about their two children - Viola and Victor