Healing and Transformation: Navigating Trauma in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

Trauma is seen as injury inflicted upon the mind of the survivor, rather than the body. When the event of Trauma takes place, the victim is unable to register and bear witness to it, this is seen as a creation of void in the memory of the victim. This event of trauma is not seen as an event, which is located in the victim's past but rather by its "unassimilated nature" (Cathy Caruth 4, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History, 1996), as in the first instance it was not fully apprehended by the survivor. And due to this nature, it keeps on coming back to haunt the survivor. These coming back-repetitions are never initiated by the survivor's own will, but rather are seen as the outcome of fate, subjecting some to a never-ending series of pain, that is beyond their control or desire. This study aims to trace the various stages of trauma a trauma survivor goes through, also bringing to the fore the generations of trauma normalized in the survivor’s home, the societal structure and how the survivor not just heals from the traumatic past but rediscovers itself through the character analysis of Celie in The Color Purple.

Keywords: Trauma, Violence, Repression, Identity, Self-discovery.