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Trauma and Shame in Conversations with Friends
ZHANG Qian-nan
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2025.05.006
School of Languages and Culture, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, China
Sally Rooney, a young Irish writer, has been dubbed “the first great novelist of the millennial generation”. Conversations with Friends, her first work, demonstrates amazing insight and subtle expression as she explores a wide range of realistic issues such as modern intimacy, class injustice, and politics, all while depicting the complex interaction between two college girls and a celebrity couple from Dublin. This paper will use psychoanalytic viewpoints from scholars such as Freud, Garland, and Kaufman to examine the trauma and shame experienced by the heroine Frances, as well as the possibilities and ways in which adults can heal the trauma. Rooney completes the trauma narrative of modern people by portraying the life and feelings of Frances, a normal modern youth.
Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends, trauma, shame
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, May 2025, Vol. 15, No. 5, 398-403
Brockes, E. (2021). Sally Rooney on the hell of fame: “It doesn’t seem to work in any real way for anyone”. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/28/sally-rooney-hell-of-fame-normal-people
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