MEMORY AS A PATHWAY TO HEALING:TRAUMA,RESILIENCE,AND MEANING-MAKING IN JOHN HART’S THE UNWILLING

Abstract

This article investigates the intricate relationship between memory, trauma, and healing in John Hart’s The Unwilling (2021) through the lens of contemporary trauma theory. Drawing primarily on Cathy Caruth’s concept of belated trauma and Shoshana Felman’s theory of testimony, the study argues that memory in the novel functions as a paradoxical and unstable force: it perpetuates psychological suffering while simultaneously enabling limited forms of resilience and meaning-making. Hart’s narrative depicts war trauma as delayed, fragmented, and resistant to direct articulation, manifesting through flashbacks, addiction, emotional withdrawal, and sustained narrative silences. Employing qualitative textual analysis, this article demonstrates that remembrance repeatedly fails to produce complete healing yet gradually facilitates survival through partial witnessing, relational acknowledgment, and ethical endurance. By resisting redemptive closure and therapeutic resolution, The Unwilling offers a morally responsible representation of postwar trauma, emphasizing resilience as persistence rather than recovery and healing as an ongoing, incomplete process.