TRAUMA AS UNCLAIMED EXPERIENCE: A CARUTHIAN READING OF SULEHRI’S MEATLESS DAYS

Abstract

This study examines Sara Suleri’s recognized text Meatless Days through the Caruthian literay framework. The analysis overviews the text as trauma narrative as an unclaimed experience shaped by loss, memory and belated understanding. The text highlights Suleri’s engagement with deaths of her loved ones specially her mother and sister that are not fully grasped by her at the moment of occurrence but these events later return back in the form of memory narration and reflection. The text is situated with autobiographical and postcolonial writings but Meatless Days offers complex portrayal of grief that unfolds gradually rather than through direct narration. While existing criticism on Meatless Days focus on postcolonial, feminist and cultural aspects of the text. But very little attention has been given to the text with reference to trauma theory, especially Cathy Caruth concept “trauma as an unclaimed experience”. This paper addresses this gap by reading text as a literary representation of trauma narrative. The aim of this paper is to explore how Sara Suleri’s text showcases the core features of Caruth’s trauma theory most importantly belatedness, fragmented memory and nonlinear narration. Through Caruth’s literary work Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History this study analyzes how traumatic loss proceeds through recollection, repetition, symbolic memory rather than direct narration. With the help of qualitative textual analysis and close reading of the text this paper highlights trauma in Meatless Days as an ongoing process rather than a complete event. This narrative structure highlights trauma’s nonlinear nature as memories emerges unexpectedly without any sequence. Loss visits the subject again and again but is not fully resolved. This study states that Meatless Days holds Caruthian argument of unclaimed experience by presenting trauma that is experienced too late and understood only through repetition. By applying this framework to Suleri’s text this paper contributes to deeper understanding of this autobiographical memoir.