Cultural Trauma in the Inheritance of Loss

At the end the twentieth century, in the media, in political speeches, in everyday talk——a strange word “trauma” had come into being, no longer confined to hospitals and psychiatric wards, which symbolized the birth of a new discourse, the discourse of Trauma, entering the domain of social sciences and the humanities . In previous studies, enormous efforts have been made to borrow the concept of trauma from medicine and psychiatry and to introduce it into sociological theory . Rooted in rapid social change, culture, one significant part in society, is a susceptible branch, generating the concept of Cultural Trauma which is also what the paper intends to explore. The coincidence is that the detailed story depicted in the Inheritance of Loss happened in the 1980s, matching the era of preliminary initiation of the theory of Cultural Trauma. Cultural trauma in the book, if adapted to the four characteristics—present in conjunction, portrayed the historical background of that special time. The first characteristic: the change itself is sudden and rapid. With globalization and industrialization developing, traditional ways of living in India, also affected by lingering British colonization, had changed rapidly. A tremendous colonial shock on Indians’ convention, a radical western shake to inner ethic spirits, as well as a wide range of Indians dreaming of being rich after moving to America, showed it was consistent with the second characteristic—trauma is radical, deep and comprehensive, touching the core. While the characters were almost Indians, the origin of trauma is perceived as imposed, exogenous, coming from the outside, meeting the third characteristics. The characters in the novel were struggling with