Rape and Trauma in A Time to Kill

Abstract

The novel A Time to Kill (1989) by a distinguished American novelist John Grisham presents a vivid portrait of how the violent rape of a ten-year young black girl by two white good-for-nothings implants a deep psychic and sexual trauma in the victim as well as in those associated with her through familial, racial and cultural ties. Any violent and forceful event like rape works as a key factor for causing disruptions, traumatic experiences, disorders in the psyche of the rape survivor, thereby rendering her subject to various Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSDs) including the physical, psychological aftereffects and other somatic symptoms. The rape victim Tonya Hailey suffers from terrible psychic and sexual traumas which surface outside in the disguised forms of eating disturbances, interrupted sleep haunted by nightmarish dreams, fear of darkness, aloneness, startling hallucinations, physical hysterias and so on. This is how, the traumatic past ridden with violent and painful memories poses a big challenge for her present existence. The novel, in a nutshell, is a recounting of sexual trauma of a young black girl, caused by the overwhelmingly brutal rape resulting in her vulnerable psychological and physical state, and the racial tension between the white and the black communities. And, it is only after the lapse of certain period of time, about nine months, that Tonya showed some signs of recovery and took to normal modes of life, as seen in most of the rape victims.