Psychological Trauma and Identity Crisis in the Time of War in V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Novel Brotherless Night

Abstract

The researcher examines how war affects the identities and mental health of individuals in the novel Brotherless Night (2024) by V.V. Ganeshananthan. Tamil minorities were treated as terrorists, and they were also killed and suffering at the hands of both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. The LTTE treated Tamils as if their lives had no value. The main objective of the research is to find how this behavior from both sides leads to trauma and identity crisis in Tamil civilians. The text of the novel serves as the primary data collection source. We use Cathy Caruth's trauma theory to explore trauma and identity in the character of Sashi and many other Tamil civilians. This study is qualitative in design and descriptive in nature; a textual analysis approach is used to explore trauma and identity destruction in Sashi’s character after losing his brother in war, including her love K. This research leaves open the intellectual space to explore feminism in V.V. Ganeshananthan’s novel Brotherless Night. (2024).