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The Good Soldier’da Aldatılma Travması

Travma teorisini kullanarak edebi metinleri incelemek, bir roman karakterinin travmanın ortaya koyulmasından iyileşmesine kadar olan farklı süreçlerinden geçişini anlama olanağı sağlar. Bu çalışma Ford Madox Ford’un The Good Soldier (1915) adlı romanında John Dowell’i travmatize olmuş bir karakter olarak ele alarak, romanın bir travma anlatısı olduğunu öne sunar. Bu doğrultuda, kafası karışmış olan John Dowell’in aldatılma travmasını bastırma, amnezi, gecikmiş etki ve afektif hissizleşme gibi travma belirtileriyle sergileyişini inceler. Sonrasında ise Dowell’in travmatik aldatılma anılarını detaylı bir anlatıya çevirerek onlarla başetmeye çalışmasına fakat travmasına hapsoluşuna odaklanır. Böylece, bu çalışma travma teorisinin psikoloji alanında ortaya çıkmasına rağmen, The Good Soldier gibi edebi metinleri farklı bir açıdan değerlendirme imkanı sunduğunu önerir. Buna bağlı olarak da John Dowell travmatik anılarıyla boğuşan bir karakter örneği olarak karşımıza çıkar.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Ford, The Good Soldier, trauma, betrayal, repression, amnesia, nachträglichkeit, affective numbing, working through trauma

The Trauma of Betrayal in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier

Analysing literary texts by using trauma theory provides remarkable insight into how a character goes through different stages of trauma from acting out towards healing. This paper proposes a reading of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier (1915) as a trauma narrative with its different aspects of a traumatically affected character, John Dowell. The paper first looks at how the confused narrator John Dowell acts out his trauma of betrayal in the forms of repression, amnesia, deferred action, and affective numbing. It then focuses on how he tries to deal with his traumatic memories of adultery by transforming them into a comprehensive narrative but ends up acting out his trauma. In doing so, this paper suggests that although trauma theory has its roots in psychoanalysis, it provides the possibility of reading literary texts such as The Good Soldier from a different perspective. As such, John Dowell is a telling example of a traumatically affected character incessantly performing his traumatic memories.

Keywords:

Ford, The Good Soldier, trauma, betrayal, repression, amnesia, nachträglichkeit, affective numbing,

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