Resilience as Reparation: An Exploration of Traumatic Memories in Santanu Bhattacharya’s One Small Voice

Abstract

Trauma is a chronic disorder brought on by a terrifying event in a human's life. The impact of trauma and responses may differ for each individual depending on their ability to cope with it. This research contributes to the field of literature by highlighting how the characters become resilient by bouncing back from trauma in the debut novel, One Small Voice (2023) by Santanu Bhattacharya. The concepts of Judith Herman’s stages of recovery, as well as Judith Butler’s symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory are utilized for analysis of trauma theory in the fiction. Further to this, the research explores how the novelist utilizes storytelling as a technique in his non-linear narration to deal with three timelines- Shubhanskar as a schoolboy, a parental aspirant and a remarkably resilient person. In recent times, the trauma theory has begun to flourish in literature and medicine to support the traumatized individuals in society. The research also touches upon the theory of remembrance, theory of forgetting, memory updating and editing, which play a major role in altering an individual’s memory over time. Therefore, the study concludes with the ideology that resilience is the hidden force behind every individual’s transformation in overcoming suppressed emotions and negative self-beliefs.