In Reading Autobiography Smith and Watson explain that the Trauma Narrative and “the
subject of trauma refers to both a person struggling to make sense of an overwhelming experience in a particular context and the ‘unspeakability’ of trauma itself, its resistance to representation” (RA 283). In the tool kit Smith and Watson guide the reader’s understanding of trauma narratives and Scriptotherapy by asking questions such as “Does the narrator struggle to find words to speak the unspeakable?…[or] does the process of writing seem to have changed the narrating ‘I’? (RA 250).
Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative is a perfect example of how traumatic experiences can complicate the narrator’s memory of violent events or powerful episodes that they experienced in the past. Mary Rowlandson was captured by Indians in 1675 during King Phillip’s War. She described her village being attacked by writing “Some in our house were fighting for their lives, others wallowing in their blood, the house on fire over our heads, and the bloody heathen ready to knock us on our head” (Rowlandson 138). She witnesses those dearest to her slain in a blood orgy of destruction and fire, and was forced to watch her child die in her arms from a gunshot wound that went through her infant and into her. Re-interpreting ‘unspeakable’ trauma often results in a changed narrating ‘I’ that relies on the therapeutic effects of self-life writing to express a new identity or understanding of the self. Rowlandson expressed the difficulty she had in relating her captivity experience through her self-life writing by saying “I cannot express to man the affliction that lay upon my spirit” (Rowlandson 146). When she emerges from the Puritan Jeremiad, or god’s testing of one’s faith through suffering, there is a certain distance between her past narrated ‘I’ and the narrating ‘I’. The narrating ‘I’ relies on bible verses and god’s providence to articulate her trauma narrative, in doing so she finds a healing or therapeutic aspect in self-life writing. Her traumatic experience had a profound effect on her psyche after returning to Christian society; she wrote “Oh! The wonderful power of God that mine eyes have see, affording matter enough for my thoughts to run in, that when others are sleeping mine are weeping” (Rowlandson 175). This passage demonstrate Smith and Watson’s claim that trauma can alter a person’s identity. Mary Rowlandson ultimately emerges as a stronger person that was saved by the grace of god, a person that is no longer bothered by trivial matters of life as she explains “If trouble from smaller matters begin to arise in me, I have something at hand to check myself with, and say, why am I troubled” (Rowlandson 176). Her captivity experience and the new found faith in god’s providence evinced through her return to civilization created a new identity for her that would make it hard for her to cry over spilt milk.
Personal Take:
I was in a serious relationship with someone that I thought was my soul mate. To make a long story short, our break-up was somewhat of a traumatic experience for me. I could not speak about it with people, other than giving them the whole macho spill; ‘I don’t care about her – it was for the best’. After some time I wrote a poem to vent some of the emotions I was feeling. I was in a pessimistic, nihilistic, and Tyler Durden-like state of mind. Writing this poem was very therapeutic for me, and it was the first thing that came to mind when I read Smith and Watson’s section on Trauma and Scriptotherapy.
let no one thing become your ball,
A chain, winding, binding, one for all.
Poisonous words intertwining,
faceless people wining and dining,
caught in a world, no rhythm, no rhyme.
Begin at once to loose it all.
Break free from your lover’s call!
Break free from your aimless flaw!
Break free from your coffin’s wall!
Break free from your empty eyes,
Looking for solace they will not find.
Catch a glimpse only to watch it pass,
lean back and let it go, but not to fast.
Begin at once to loose it all.
Eat, drink, fuck, and screw,
that is all that one can do.
Let it all fall and shatter on the floor,
what once was, was no more,
every virgin ends a whore.
Begin at once to loose it all.
Let shit hit fan,
abandon your fucking plan!
No hope nor reason will suffice,
leave each to their own device.
Rip mask from face,
all there is, is this place.
Now that she is forever gone,
It does not matter what went wrong.
Begin at once to loose it all.
Set out for something,
become lost in nothing.
Reach out for the skies,
end up covered in dirt.
Find what truth you sought,
then realize it is, but naught.
-Joe Fleming
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