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Posttraumatic Reflection in the American Post 9/11 Novel

Student: Raevskaia Anna

Supervisor: Ekaterina Vladimirovna Chernetsova

Faculty: School of Foreign Languages

Educational Programme: Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication (Bachelor)

Final Grade: 9

Year of Graduation: 2019

Traumatic events of extreme magnitude in different forms influence the material and intellectual life of modern society. Fiction cannot ignore these events and tries to find out the interpretations, causes and consequences of them. This research is supposed to analyze three examples of fiction works written after the terrorist attacks September, 11, 2001. They are J. S. Foer’s “Extremely loud & incredibly close”, D. DeLillo’s “Falling man”, and E. L. Doctorow’s “Andrew’s brain”. The novels were investigated through the prism of an individual suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after 9/11. By means of following methods: comparative-historical, comparative-typological, biographical, socio-cultural, psychological and the method of in-depth analysis of fiction – we indicated the peculiarities of each author and revealed what determines their choice of a particular artistic method. Each author is different and unique in the choice of artistic means to convey their ideas. However, some common motifs can be traced in all three novels. The findings of this interdisciplinary study may be useful for the further research on reflecting the traumatic experience through the psychological conditions of the characters in fiction. Our research sheds light on how American writers perceived 9/11 in their novels.

Full text (added May 20, 2019)

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