《火痕》中歌声复归的延宕与创伤后的成长

The Delayed Return to Singing and Abyssinia’s Growth after Trauma in Marked by Fire

摘要: 在乔伊斯·卡罗尔·托马斯的《火痕》(Marked by Fire, 1982)中，主人公阿比西尼亚在遭受性侵后曾一度失语，约两个月后恢复言说，歌声却迟至七年后，在巴克妈妈葬礼上才重新出现。文章以这一时间差为切入点，借助拉卡普拉关于创伤“重演”与“修通”的讨论，考察小说为何安排主人公阿比在言说恢复以后仍长期“不能歌唱”这一问题。文章认为，歌声的持续缺席表明小说没有把重新说话处理为创伤已经结束的标志。在这段间隔中，阿比逐渐摆脱自我归罪，父亲的归来、巴克妈妈的陪伴以及行医学徒经历，也使她获得新的生活经验和自我认识。圣诞演出的失败与葬礼上的复歌形成对照：小说把歌声的复归安排在歌声不再需要被用来证明她“创伤已经痊愈”的时刻。因此，这七年并非主人公等待痊愈的空白期，而是小说用来展开书写人物创伤后成长的重要时段。小说真正关注的，不是创伤需要多久才能彻底痊愈，而是当生活仍在继续、伤痛尚未消散时，一个人要如何一步步走下去、继续成长。

Abstract: In Joyce Carol Thomas’s Marked by Fire (1982), the protagonist Abyssinia becomes unable to speak after she is raped. About two months later, she regains the ability to speak, yet she does not sing again until seven years later, at Mother Barker’s funeral. Taking this temporal gap as its point of departure, this article draws on Dominick LaCapra’s discussion of “acting-out” and “working-through” to examine why the novel allows Abyssinia to speak again while leaving her unable to sing for years afterward. It argues that the prolonged absence of her singing voice shows that the novel does not treat the return of speech as evidence that the effects of the trauma have passed. During these intervening years, Abyssinia gradually moves beyond self-blame, while her father’s return, Mother Barker’s companionship and care, and her apprenticeship as a healer give new shape to her life. The contrast between her failed Christmas performance and her singing at the funeral further suggests that the novel places the return of singing at a moment when singing is no longer demanded as proof that she has fully recovered. These seven years without singing are therefore not an empty interval of waiting for recovery, but the central period in which the novel traces her growth after trauma. What the novel ultimately asks us to consider is not how long complete recovery from trauma takes, but how a person goes on living and growing while life continues and pain remains.