Aleph
Volume 13, Numéro 2, Pages 17-38
2026-05-05
Silence, Shame, And Affective Endurance : Relational Trauma In John Marsden’s So Much To Tell You
Authors : Djeffal Mohamed . Bey Boumezrag Maria .
Abstract
This article examines John Marsden’s So Much to Tell You through an affect-centred approach that brings trauma theory, affect studies, and reader-response criticism into dialogue. It argues that the novel represents trauma not primarily as a recoverable past event, but as a relational condition structured by silence, fragmentation, shame, and the unstable dynamics of diary writing. Rather than treating Marina’s muteness as a temporary obstacle on the way to confession or recovery, the study shows that silence functions as an affective force that reorganizes domestic, institutional, and readerly space. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s account of emotional orientation, Teresa Brennan’s theory of affective transmission, Dominick LaCapra’s reflections on trauma and witnessing, and Wolfgang Iser’s concept of textual gaps, the article analyses how feeling circulates through scenes of exposure, hesitation, and partial revelation. The diary emerges not as a transparent medium of self-expression, but as an unstable mode of address that redistributes vulnerability across narrator, characters, and readers. The study ultimately argues that the novel challenges recovery-based models of young-adult trauma fiction by foregrounding endurance, ethical uncertainty, and incomplete knowledge as central conditions of survival.
Keywords
affect theory ; relational trauma ; silence ; diary form ; shame ; young-adult literature
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