Defining Trauma and How it Spreads: Assessing 'Maus' and 'People Like That Are the Only People Here' Alexandra Bayer College

‘Trauma’ is a loaded word, as there is such a range of events which can cause a trauma, and also such a range of possible reactions to the trauma. Naomi Morgenstern wrote that “[t]rauma…is a theoretical figure for the insistence of history (its haunting repetitions) and the discontinuities of subjectivity. A trauma is an event that so overwhelms the ego’s capacity to experience it that the subject is disengaged from the very experience he or she claims. A trauma is an event that can only happen again.” Traumas have been well-represented in many of the works studied this semester, but best so by Maus I and Maus II by Art Spiegelman, and “People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk” by Lorrie Moore. These works demonstrate three sides of trauma: the action or event which causes the trauma; the first-hand effects of the trauma; and the second-hand effects of the trauma. The trauma continues to spread from person to person, demonstrating its wide reach and resounding echo.

The traumas experienced in Maus and “People Like That” are very different; in Maus, Vladek is traumatized by the war(s), and the anti-Semitism, and the torture. In “People Like That,” although the trauma was also felt by the baby...