The Mailer Review/Volume 4, 2010/Effects of Trauma on the Narrative Structures of Across the River and Into the Trees and The Naked and the Dead: Difference between revisions

The narrative evolution occurring in Mailer and Hemingway emboldens a different type of narrative structure that takes the tragedy of trauma not only as subject matter for the fiction but, more important, takes the experience of the tragedy of trauma as structure. This evolved form of narrative is a tragedy not involving hegemonic, external deus ex machina and internal heroic flaws as the impetus for the structure of the fiction, but a narrative structure that instead uses the previously silenced experience of suffering {{efn|Cathy Caruth asserts that “[l]iterature, like psychoanalysis, is interested in the complex relation between knowing and not knowing. And it is at the specific point at which knowing and not knowing intersect that the language of literature and the psychoanalytic theory of traumatic experience meet”(3). In ''Across the River'', Hemingway echoes Caruth’s point as Cantwell asks himself, “How can I remember if I am not bitter?” (230). Cantwell’s question illustrates the complex relation between the knowing and not knowing which arises in trauma. More importantly, his question focuses on the very nature of attempting to remember from the abject position of trauma.}} to generate and provide structure for the narrative.