Trauma, as a motif in Douglas Stuart’s novel, Shuggie Bain: the study of Shuggie Bain in the light of trauma theory

Abstract

Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart, is the 2020 Booker Prize-winning semi-autobiographical novel that depicts the vicissitudes of Shuggie’s family, and that of the general public of Glasgow during the1980s. The policies of Margaret Thatcher had severely affected the industrial town of Glasgow, shutting down many industries and factories, and pushing its citizens to unemployment. With this as the political background, Douglas portrays the struggles of the alcoholic mother Agnes Bain (Shuggie’s mother) and the resultant cause of misery to everyone around her, especially her son Shuggie, which marks the plot of this novel. He is the victim of intergenerational trauma caused due to bad parenting, physically too he suffers because of his sexual identity crisis. This study is based on the trauma theory in literature with a special focus on the personal model of trauma as well as the collective trauma of the people in Glasgow. The theory applied is drawn out from the trauma models put by Cathy Caruth in Unclaimed experience; trauma narrative and history (1991) and Erikson in Notes on Trauma and Community (1996).