The Rhetoric of Trauma and Healing: A Study of Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman
Abstract:
This paper deals with the issue of comfort women and their next generations as presented in Nora Okja Keller’s novel Comfort Woman. Taking into consideration the theoretical explorations of Cathy Caruth, Gabriele Schwab and Jenny Edkins, this paper would try to throw light upon the problematic of trauma and trans-generational trauma experienced by the survivor and her daughter respectively. This paper would also try to delineate how Keller very efficiently puts forward the rhetoric of their healing. Besides this, my paper would also try to analyse why the unearthing and reading of such narratives is relevant even today and how Keller, herself a Korean-American author, through her work, poses a challenge to the dominant and patriarchal Korean culture that tried to eliminate the brutal history of the comfort women. This paper would therefore explore into an Asian history of abuse on women that has largely been ignored in the narratives of the Second World War.
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