AKSHAYA ANISHKUMAR LEC052005 THE RED RIBBON: A STORY OF TRAUMA

 

The Red Ribbon: A Story of Trauma

 

Trauma refers to a person’s emotional response to a past event which had a strong effect in the life of the person which in turn will influence his emotions and situations in the future. Trauma theory emerged when a group of critics began to study the cultural effects of trauma. In 1896 Freud introduced a new theory called the seduction theory: “In 1896 Freud presented a theory about hysteria which is generally known as the seduction theory. According to the ‘Seduction theory’, hysterical patients suffer from long term effects of sexual assaults during childhood (Israels 1)”. This theory was the basis of trauma theory. As studies of trauma became more common the term was also applied to interpret a literary text on the basis of trauma. This essay explores how The Red Ribbon is a traumatic short story.

The Red Ribbon is a short story written by Dr. Jeff Howlin. Dr. Howlin is a psychologist specialized in psychotherapy for depression. He has worked with individuals of all age and different life situations. His job had a great influence on works that he authored. The Red Ribbon is also one of the stories which has got a high influence of his job, relations and feelings etc.

The protagonist of the short story is a woman who is strongly affected by trauma of her childhood. A red ribbon which she got when she was a little girl is the prime symbol shown throughout the story. At the beginning of the story we can see that she is in the memory of her childhood related to the ribbon. She was just married and twenty seven years of age when she had a flash of that memory in her heart. After the murder of her husband, which was a shock to her, she had this similar taught of the ribbon. Whenever she thinks about the ribbon she falls into deep tears. The repeated remembrance of her childhood thus shows us that this story is an example of trauma and the protagonist is strongly affected by it.

Dream is another important symbol of the short story The Red Ribbon. The protagonist frequently dreams about the ribbon:

In the dream I was falling and falling and falling in an ominous blackness. I might have been between two cliff edges. A hand reached down from above and in the palm of the hand a red ribbon. I reached for the ribbon as I fell, but my hand couldn’t quiet reach it. (Howlin 1)

In this dream she is not able to grab the symbol of her happiness of her childhood. Freud in his book Interpretation of Dreams states that the main function of dream is to fulfill the repressed wishes. Peter Barry in his essay ‘Psychoanalytical criticism says that: “Freud believes that a dream id an escape hatch or a safety- valve through which repressed desires, fears or memories seek an outlet into the conscious mind (Barry 3)”.

As far as the Freudian interpretation of dream is concerned, red ribbon is the symbol of the relief from sadness in the childhood of the protagonist. The protagonist strongly wishes for a relief to her life and she in her dream tries to grab the ribbon which is the symbol of relief from the realities of her life and which unfortunately she was not able to get hold of. But at the end of the story we can see that she grabs the ribbon in her dream and after that dream she wakes up and finds a relief from all her problems.

It is clear that it is the red ribbon which makes the protagonist cool from all her burning realities. In the childhood she becomes happy when she gets a real red ribbon. Even after the passing twenty seven long years the red ribbon itself comes for her recue. This time she is not actually longing for the red ribbon which made her happy twenty seven years ago but for the same happiness when she got the ribbon. The memory of the ribbon was repressed in her mind. So the story is all related to the traumatic elements and the effect of dreams in one’s life.  Thus this short story, ‘The Red Ribbon’ is a story of trauma dreams and healing.

 

Works Cited

Barry, Peter. “Psychoanalytic Criticism.” Literary Criticism and Theory, edited by Saji K S and Subin Vargheese, Chennai, Macmillan, 2019, pp. 80–96.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Revised, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2009.

Howlin, Jeff. “The Red Ribbon (A Short Story of Trauma, Dreams and Healing) | Dr. Jeff Howlin.” Sntacurz Psychologist, 9 Sept. 2016, www.santacruzpsychologist.com/blog/2016/the-red-ribbon-a-short-story-of-trauma-dreams-and-healing-2.

Israels, Han, and Morton Schatzman. “The Seduction Theory.” Sage Jounals, 1993, p. 1, journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0957154X9300401302?journalCode=hpya.