The White Hotel: trauma, recovery, and the question of the Holocaust’s uniqueness

Abstract

ABSTARCTD. M. Thomas’ The White Hotel negotiates an uneasy point of intersection between our theories of psychic injury and our assessments of atrocity by attempting to depict two positions that appear to exist in tension with each other: (1) an insistence that Holocaust that is historically and morally incommensurate with other catastrophes and (2) a belief that the post-traumatic maladies suffered by survivors of the Final Solution might be susceptible to a comprehensive healing. Thomas’ allegorical (and critically polarizing) coda becomes the vehicle through which he orchestrates a reconcilement these two commitments.