Bearing Witness: Language, Silence and Trauma Representation in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life

Author(s)	Ms. Unnathi Varsha Singh
Country	India
Abstract	The paper examines the role of language in shaping and perpetuating trauma in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. While many trauma theorists conceptualise trauma through repetition belatedness and linguistic crisis, their framework often privileges fragmentation and silence as universal modes of representation. This analysis resists narrow framing by demonstrating how Yanagihara’s novel dramatises not only through gaps, silences and muteness but through the coercive force of language itself. Dialogues with Brother Peter, Father Gabriel, Brother Luke, Doctor Traylor, Caleb reveals how words of accusations, conditional affection and manipulative praise actively construct Jude St. Francis’s psychic injury, binding him to narratives of shame and inevitability. By foregrounding linguistic violence as a mechanism of trauma, the paper argues that literature does more than bear witness to the unspeakable; it exposes how language itself becomes a weapon that subjugates, erodes agency and identity. This intervention insists on expanding trauma studies beyond Western stylistic paradigms, emphasising the ethical necessity of recognizing trauma as lived entrapment in imposed narratives that resist closure.
Keywords	Trauma, Trauma Theory, Language, Linguistic Violence, Trauma Representation
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 2, March-April 2026
Published On	2026-03-26
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i02.72600

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