This research aims to make an addition to the current debate regarding the interpretation of North Korean defector memoirs by answering the question: “What understanding can trauma theory provide...Show moreThis research aims to make an addition to the current debate regarding the interpretation of North Korean defector memoirs by answering the question: “What understanding can trauma theory provide us concerning North Korean defector memoirs?” It discusses trauma theory, Holocaust memoirs, and North Korean defector memoirs. Regarding North Korean defector memoirs the study focuses on four memoirs specifically: Eunsun Kim’s A Thousand Miles to Freedom, Yeonmi Park’s In Order to Live, Hyeonseo Lee’s The Girl with Seven Names, and Joseph Kim’s Under the Same Sky.Show less
Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo, can take the reader into a place of memory that monuments and art cannot. Her narratives, extracts, and poetry do not use a linear timeline that make a...Show moreAuschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo, can take the reader into a place of memory that monuments and art cannot. Her narratives, extracts, and poetry do not use a linear timeline that make a coherent story. Instead, Delbo fills her narratives with recollections of bodily suffering, which are infused with the smells, tastes, and sights of what she experienced in Auschwitz. With the plethora of Holocaust testimonies that are available today, Delbo’s Auschwitz and After is particularly influential because of its ability to show the reader through visual techniques the stark differences between bodily and sensory functions in Auschwitz when compared to the outside world. This confers a unique visual effect, which has haunted readers and academics. This has motivated them to examine Delbo’s work in further detail. This thesis, looks at what affect the use of sense memory in Charlotte Delbo’s Auschwitz and After has on the reader. It argues, that through sense memory the reader initially believes they have begun to understand the realities of Auschwitz. This is because they can liken the sensory and bodily functions to their own experiences. However, Delbo deconstructs these familiar aspects and pushes the reader into the realms of her Auschwitz experience. The reader can see the stark contrasts between the familiar meanings, and the new experience that Delbo has granted to them. This thesis looks into representations of sense memory within Auschwitz and After and how it creates affect in the readerShow less
