The post-traumatic in the story “My Star, My Wormwood…” by Tetiana Lavrova

Abstract

The need for a literary interpretation of the manifestations of post-traumatic stress determines the relevance of the study. The purpose of this article is to characterize the manifestations of the post-traumatic issues in the short story “My Star, My Wormwood…” by Tetiana Lavrova (2002). To achieve this goal, contextual and psychological analysis, comparative, structuralist methods were used. The novelty of the article consists of the introduction of a story by the little-known writer T. Lavrova (married Mitsinska), which was published in the pages of the magazine “Vitchyzna”. The results of the study. The manifestations of the post-traumatic disorder of the character of the story at the mental, emotional, physical, and behavioral levels were analyzed. The following emotional reactions to trauma were identified: despondency, anxiety, disorientation, denial, emotional swings, intrusive thoughts about trauma, lack of control, a tendency to isolate, feelings of alienation, a decrease in interest in everyday activities, or depression. The results of the study prove that the manifestation of the character’s post-traumatic disorder is the lack of verbalization of emotions, realized due to the incompleteness of sentences. It is noted that T. Lavrovа realizes the reflection of the psyche of a person affected by trauma by resorting to the techniques of direct psychologism (“stream of consciousness”, “inner speech”). The writer uses forms of self-narrative with numerous self-reflective passages. The traumatic bifurcation of the character of the story “My Star, My Wormwood…” by T. Lavrova is revealed linguistically. The writer focuses on the individual issues (in this case, the tragedy of the nameless woman). At the same time, the namelessness of the character indicates the orientation towards the typicality of the tragic situation. It turns out that the author presents not the image of the events themselves, but the image of how they are reflected in the mind of the character. The analysis of fragments of the story makes it possible to understand the search for answers to questions of existence, the main categories of which in this work are sin and atonement. Special emphasis is placed on disclosing the donor zone of the ontological metaphor with the “liquid” element.