Historical Trauma in Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam

Abstract

Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam?examine’s America’s ‘delivery’ of civilization where Mailer draws a dread parallel between the Vietnam war and the Alaskan safari. America went to Vietnam to ‘deliver’ civilization to the ‘uncivilized’ Vietnamese but ended up in the ‘killings’ of innocent people. America’s discourse of civilization thus, became a tool of violence and exercising power up on the innocent Vietnamese citizens. The characters of this novel go to Vietnam from America in order to civilize the innocent Vietnamese to forget their terrible and dreadful past and search for a spiritual solace, but their suffering does not get over, cannot get relief from suffering and then they are beset with their traumatic experiences. This present research on Why Are We in Vietnam?by Norman Mailer attempts to show a vivid portrayal of traumatic experience of modern American life triggered by the violent act of American’s in the Alaskan Brooks Range through the means of characters deteriorated traumatic condition. This novel identifies war and its destruction and frustrated American life where spirituality is defeated in surge of the materialism leading toward the traumatic dread. Here, Mailer portrays and explores the doomed way of human psyche and the dark side of human life which is reflected in the form of flash backs, nightmares and other repeated phenomena.