Trauma in Elie Wiesel's night (1960) and Mark Mathabane's kaffir boy : the True story of a Black Youth’s coming of age in south Africa (1986)

Abstract

The present work explores how trauma is experienced under the state of oppression in Elie Wiesel’s Night (1960) and Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa (1986). The novels are studied through the lens of Cathy Caruth’s theory of Trauma, as introduced in her book, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (1995). In the light of this theory, Night and Kaffir Boy are analyzed by shedding light on the concepts of historical trauma, the belated symptoms of trauma and the duality of trauma in two different contexts: the Holocaust and the Apartheid.