Unveiling Hidden Traumas: Examining Freudian Concepts in Mahesh Dattani’s Dance Like a Man

Abstract

Trauma is one of the strongest natural phenomena that nature has added to human lives. It is assumed that trauma shatters human beings in a way that recollecting the pieces of their personality makes it too difficult to stand up and lead a normal life for those who experience this phenomenon. In literature, the writers tried their hands at recreating the events that caused human lives to experience trauma. However, whether the text conveys the exact effect of the feeling or not that is another study but several novels including graphic novels like Maus, are referred to as good examples of this kind of writing in literature. According to psychologists, trauma is caused not only by events or the horrors that one faces in life but their memories about the events leading to the particular feelings. Like William Wordsworth’s definition of poetry “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of the powerful feeling; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in Tranquility” – William Wordsworth. The unpleasant feelings of past events get collected in memories, reflecting situationally or throughout life creating trauma for a lifetime. It could also be considered the part of Neurosis that makes the experiences turn out to be Traumatic and difficult to manage. Exploring the literature review Mahesh Dattani’s Dance Like a Man is one of the Indian plays that discussed several issues including culture, gender discrimination, a sense of loss of identity, and much more similar. However, this paper focuses on the different angles of the play based on Freud’s theory on Trauma; the traumatic experiences that the family goes through on an individual level without the knowledge of each other’s pain. The concept of a typical family is exhibited in the play yet the couple leads their lives in the name of Love, Care, Support, and Ambition, which seem to be partially fake and hollow.