Abstract:
Rape, war, holocaust, natural disasters etc are some of the core determinants that can beget trauma to a person and discommode his psyche to a great extent. Traumatic memories disturb and shatter an individual’s identity unmitigatedly. In this context, the two World Wars can be referred to which left the world in a devastated state with survivors fighting endlessly to forget the gruesome experience in the wars. One such group of survivors were the ‘Hibakusha’ from Japan. They are the ones who were the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that took place in the year 1945. The most serious outcome of this catastrophic incident was that it created a lot of psychological and emotional wounds to the survivors. Hiroshima Mon Amour (Hiroshima My Love) a film by Alain Resnais in 1959 presents us two characters who suffered from individual and cultural trauma respectively. The script is written by the French author Marguerite Duras. Though the script is written on the backdrop of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, it concentrates more on the unnamed French woman who braved a personal trauma after her lover’s death. The bombing of Hiroshima serves as a parallel to her lover’s death and we find her trying to repress the memory to escape the traumatic pain. The present paper aims at blurring the cultural and the personal trauma in the process of recovery and show how trauma narratives act as an invaluable mechanism for the victim to get rid of the grisly traumatic events that they were intentionally forgetting.
Key Words: cultural trauma, Hibakusha, personal trauma, trauma narratives, recovery
1. Introduction
Sigmund Freud in his text Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) defined trauma as “a wound inflicted not upon the body but upon the mind and also a breach in the protective barrier.”(Freud 29) In Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (1996), the trauma specialist Cathy Curath describes trauma as an “overwhelming experience of sudden or catastrophic events in which the response to the event occurs in the often delayed, uncontrolled repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena.” (Curath 11) Curath amplifies Freud’s idea further and states that trauma cannot be limited to a particular event at a particular time; rather the survivor can also experience traumatic episodes later in their life. Freud and Curath refer to Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1581) where the hero Tancred unknowingly slaughters his beloved Clorinda in a duel and suffers from the sense of guilt and grief. Tancred witnesses traumatic experiences later when he accidently hits a tree with his sword and hears the voice of Clorinda who accuses him of her death. This episode showed that traumatic events are not restricted to the particular moment of violence or pain; rather it can be experienced later in a more intensified form.
Sigmund Freud in Studies on Hysteria (1895) held the view that an event unacceptable to consciousness may be forgotten for a particular time, yet there is the possibility that it would return again in the form of compulsive repetitive behavior. Therefore, it is evident that memory plays a very significant role here. In this context, we can refer to Freud’s psychoanalysis which is based on the conviction that individuals possess unconscious and repressed feelings, desires, memories etc which at times may become the source for giving rise to traumatic experiences. Mind therefore has the capacity to repress traumatic memories for ages, yet there is a higher possibility of retrieving it either in direct or indirect form.
Rape, war, holocaust, natural disasters etc are some of the core determinants that can beget trauma to a person and discommode his psyche to a great extent. Traumatic memories disturb and shatter an individual’s identity unmitigatedly. In this context, the two World Wars can be referred to which left the world in a devastated state with survivors fighting endlessly to forget the gruesome experience in the wars. One such group of survivors were the ‘Hibakusha’ from Japan. They are the ones who were the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that took place in the year 1945. They were afflicted both physically and mentally. The ones who survived and the later generations suffered from various perilous diseases as a result of the nuclear radiation released by the bombs. The most serious outcome of this catastrophic incident was that it created a lot of psychological and emotional wounds to the survivors. It was therefore not restricted to individual trauma; rather it became a mass trauma. It is seen that war survivors often suffer from amnesia and hence they find it difficult to recollect the gruesome experiences. These symptoms might not be permanent. At times even if they remember those events, in order to carry on with their lives they began to forcefully forget the tragedy. This happens to every individual who witnessed traumatic events no matter how they responded to it at that particular moment. However, it is found that one’s repressed emotions and painful memories might trigger at any moment given that the person witnesses similar or more powerful traumatic events in later life. Mental health experts and therapists suggest that suppressing traumatic events is not a possible solution to get rid of the hideous past and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that follows after that. Instead, recovery is likely to take place only when the victim tries to voice the event to the therapist or any closed ones with whom the person feels comfortable. The fragmented memories and language of the victim leads to healing in the process of remembering. The incoherent speech of the victims in the various trauma narratives gradually takes a linear shape once they start voicing their traumatic experiences. The compulsive repetitive behavior which Freud states in his Studies on Hysteria (1895) is evident in the narratives of trauma. The present paper aims at blurring the cultural and the personal trauma in the process of recovery and show how trauma narratives act as an invaluable mechanism for the victim to get rid of the grisly traumatic events that they were intentionally forgetting.
2. Blurring the Cultural Trauma and the Personal Trauma
Women risk giving birth to malformed children,
to monsters, but it goes on.
Men risk becoming sterile, but it goes on.
People are afraid of the rain.
The rain of ashes on the waters of the Pacific.
The waters of the Pacific kill.
Fishermen of the Pacific are dead.
People are afraid of the food.
The food of an entire city is thrown away.
The food of entire cities is buried.
An entire city rises up in anger.
Entire cities rise up in anger. (Duras 22)
Hiroshima Mon Amour (Hiroshima My Love), a film by the French film director Alain Resnais in 1959 presents us two characters who suffered from individual and cultural trauma respectively. The script was written by the French author Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) whose husband survived the concentration camps of the Nazis and returned home severely traumatized. It is believed that Duras’s insights into her husband’s condition made her create two characters who suffered from similar traumatic experiences. Though the script is written on the backdrop of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, it concentrates more on the unnamed French woman who braved a personal trauma after her lover’s death. The bombing of Hiroshima serves as a parallel to her lover’s death and we find her trying to repress the memory to escape the traumatic pain. The paper aims at showing how she heals herself by voicing the narratives of her trauma and in the process she gradually becomes successful in presenting a linear narrative unlike the fragmented narrative of a trauma victim/survivor. It shows how the cultural trauma and the personal trauma get blurred in the process of recovery. It also focuses on the power of testimony that unintentionally becomes a source of the victim’s healing mechanism.
It was in August 1957, a French woman arrived at Hiroshima to act in a film on ‘Peace’. The story begins and ends in a single day at Hiroshima where she meets a Japanese architect and engages in a fleeting love affair with him the day before she returns to France. The faces of the two protagonists remain anonymous and their identity concealed. They are referred to as the French woman and the Japanese man. The opening scene is in a room where two naked bodies are shown fondling each other and the bodies were covered with ash and dew-like substance signifying the ash to have arisen out of the atomic bombing. The scene then shifts to the gruesome images of the place after the bombing with mutilated and formless bodies struggling between life and death. The two characters remain unnamed which shows their crushing identities and a conversation starts between them regarding the catastrophic event in Hiroshima. The French woman gives her remarks on the place based on her observations. She talks about the museum which demonstrated images so perfectly that it made the tourists cry. She says-
“I saw the patience, the innocence, the apparent meekness with which the temporary survivors of Hiroshima adapted themselves to a fate so unjust that the imagination, normally so fertile, cannot conceive it”. (Duras 20)
However, the Japanese constantly deny her assertion saying that she has seen nothing at Hiroshima compared to him. The cultural trauma that the “Hibakusha” (atomic bomb survivors) of Japan experienced is considered by them to be superior to any other trauma experienced by anyone. Therefore, he consistently denies that she could feel the trauma that the Japanese experienced. The Japanese lost his entire family in the bombing while he was serving in the war. The cultural trauma that a whole generation of people and the later generations to come would face is considered incomparable to other traumas. The Hibakusha tried to distance itself from the horrendous past by trying to blur the memories associated with it. The girl was trying to convince him constantly that she could feel and share the cultural trauma that the Japanese endured. The scene shows “a spiraling atomic cloud. People marching in the streets in the rain. Fisherman tainted with radioactivity. Inedible fish. Thousands of inedible fish are buried.” (Duras 21) The cultural trauma of the Hibakusha triggers the girl’s long suppressed personal trauma. The girl finally unveils her story of trauma as she feels the story of Hiroshima parallels her story of Nevers, France. The image of the Japanese sleeping on the bed reminds her of her dead lover lying on the ground. The narrative now shifts from the cultural trauma to a personal trauma of the French woman.
The French woman gives a very brief description about her lover in Nevers which showed that she did not want to carry the conversation further. However, the Japanese persuade her to speak more about Nevers and her dead lover. He at times played the role of her dead lover and therefore she imagines the Japanese to be her dead lover and started narrating the event which opens the gate of memories for her. For the first time after that tragic incident she opens up her thoughts to someone. The incoherency of her speech is evident when she recalls the trauma she endured after his death.
“The world moves along over my head. Instead of the sky… of course… I see the world walking. Quickly during the week. Slowly on Sunday. It doesn’t know I’m in the cellar. They pretend I’m dead, dead a long way from Nevers. That’s what my father wants. Because I’m disgraced, that’s what my father wants”. (Duras 55)
She fell in love with a German soldier who was considered an enemy of France. He was shot dead the day she decided to elope with him. The sight of her lover lying dead on the ground made her paralyze and she sat the whole day beside him. She wanted him so badly that she desired a dead man. She acts lustfully and starts licking the walls of the cellar. The next moment she felt disgusted, breathed heavily and acted like a madwoman who is no longer rational. People shaved her head and paraded through the town considering her to be a traitor of the nation. She was kept in a cellar at her home and her family, friends and society shunned her completely as she brought disgrace to herself and her family by loving a German. She becomes motionless and the only thing that she remembers is the soldier’s name. She trembles in horror with the thought that she has a blurred memory of her past. Her interior monologue which is addressed to her German lover shows her inconsistencies in her thoughts, but we find her narrative taking a linear shape eventually. “I told our story… For fourteen years I hadn’t found… the taste of an impossible love again … Look how I’m forgetting you. Look how I’ve forgotten you.” (Duras 73)
The narrative shows how both the characters were healing themselves by voicing their traumatic memories which they were suppressing for years. The French woman got attracted to the Japanese man because he was also suffering from a similarly intense pain and therefore he became the interlocutor for her. The fragmented memories have started shaping into a linear one as they try to confront their trauma. For the girl the tragedy of Nevers is no less than the tragedy of Hiroshima. She considered both the incidents analogous thus blurring the cultural and the personal trauma. Many critics consider her to be a psychotic character who was not fully recovered from the trauma because she was never able to undergo a natural mourning process. But, her narratives give an idea that she was overcoming her hysteric nature by letting her express the repressed thoughts that disturbed her for years. Both the protagonists heal themselves in the process and in the end they assert a new identity for each other. The reason for their trauma now becomes a reason for their identity as they name each other ‘Hi-ro-shi-ma’ (to the Japanese man) and ‘Ne-vers-en-France’ (to the French woman) respectively (Hiroshima Mon Amour). Thus, the transferring of pain from one person to another by voicing their long repressed agonies helped the protagonists to recover themselves from the depth of trauma.
3. Conclusion
Susan Sontag in her work Reading the Pain of Others (2013) talks about ‘signature pictures’ which consists of both abstract and concrete images that acts as memories related to any event or accident. In the film Hiroshima Mon Amour, the images of the museum that represented the heinous event of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima brought painful traumatic memories to both the protagonists. Sontag argues that the victims or survivors of such traumatic events usually try to repress the memories related to the event. The Japanese man and the French woman were no exception to this. Both the protagonists tried to repress their pain until they witnessed the ‘signature pictures’ at the museum. The images of the cultural trauma at the museum therefore became synonymous to the personal trauma of the French woman as it brought flashbacks of the past. It triggers her into the depth of the trauma she endured a few years ago. As stated before, the French woman was punished by society for having relations with a German soldier. She was considered a traitor of the nation and therefore her head was shaved and she was kept in the basement for a long time. Similarly, after the dropping of ‘Little Boy’ (the atomic bomb), the population of Hiroshima suffered endlessly for a long time. Her loss of hair is synonymous to the ‘Hibakusha’ who lost their hair due to the diseases caused by the harmful radiations after the bombing. Again, both the protagonists had signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that resulted in flashbacks, hallucinations, repetitive behaviors etc. Both of them had vague recollections of their traumatic memories in the beginning for it is said that the trauma victim never remembers his/her past in a conscious state, rather it is recollected in an emotional way (Vickroy 169). It was observed that the fleeting affair between the Japanese man and the French woman gives meaning to their lost existence and it becomes a mode of recovery for them. The temporal distortions and repetition of the dialogues that we witness in the beginning now takes shape into a linear narrative pattern. The oblique glimpses of the protagonists now gains identity. Duras presents us two characters who carried the weight of the World War and the trauma of an entire generation of people along with their personal traumas. The paper tried to explore the realm of trauma through Alain Resnais’ film and in the process showed how trauma of the past infringed upon the present and changed their lives. It highlights the power of talk therapy which is often suggested by psychologists around the world. Patients are always encouraged to speak on their traumatic experience as a mode of recovery. Similarly, in ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’, the protagonists recovered from their respective trauma through the narratives shared by them to each other. The paper thus showed that trauma narratives can be considered as an excellent strategy for rehabilitation of the trauma victims.
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