A REPRESENTATION OF CONSEQUENCES OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA IN GOD HELP THE CHILD BY TONI MORRISON

Abstract

The study looks into Toni Morrison's most recent book, God Help the Child (2015), which explores the historical trauma and inherited family trauma of being black. It demonstrates how African American youngsters learn about white culture, black communities, and their own self-worth in Morrison's novels through the history of racial discrimination. In this study, intergenerational trauma and its effects on various African American generations are examined with reference to the Trauma Theory highlighted by Judith Herman in her book “Trauma and Recovery”. This paper analyses the protagonists' horrific childhood experiences and how those events affected their decisions as adults. The research uses trauma theory as its primary theoretical framework to investigate the transmission of trauma and racial themes from one generation to the next. The focus of the plot of the work under discussion is on both individual and collective trauma, as well as its impact on victims who have experienced trauma, their roles as unhealed generations, and its transmission. It has discussed various sorts of child abuse, which affects both white and black children, and has described the traumatising experiences of black children's survivors in a modern American context. This thesis has shown that trauma has long-term ramifications that pose a serious threat to today's generations and the representation of black bodies in America, including the collapse of the individual psyche and the destruction of interpersonal connections. The research concludes by stating that racial beliefs continue to have harmful effects because they are constantly repeated yet never change.