Trauma

Over the course of the novel, the author centralizes the sorrows and struggles of each character in order to underscore the universality of trauma. The author introduces this thematic consideration by way of Seamus’s point of view in Chapter 1, “The Late Americans.” A student in the graduate poetry program, Seamus is perpetually irritated with his classmates for writing about their trauma and pain. He not only believes it is irrelevant to the creation of art, but that it is fundamentally unoriginal. “No one had a good life,” he holds (24). “Human pain existed in a vast supply, and people took from it like grain from a barn. There was pain for you and pain for you and pain for you—agony enough for everyone” (24, 25). Although Seamus believes that “hurt feelings, cruel parents, strange and wearisome troubles” are not “worth poetry,” the author seeks to prove otherwise...