Analysis on William P. Young's The Shack
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| Book Cover |
Unfortunately, more than often one
consequently undergoes a dreadful depression and impenetrable silence after a
traumatic event. It is an occurrence we see displayed in William P. Young’s The Shack as Mack is subjected to “the
great sadness” succeeding the horrendous kidnapping and murder of his daughter,
Missy. The Shack illustrates the
struggle of overcoming trauma through Willie’s testimony of Mack’s journey
toward overcoming and surviving trauma. Dori Laub describes the importance and
process of this journey of traumatic and emotional victory in his essay, “Truth
and Testimony: The Process and The Struggle.”
According
to Laub there are three levels of witnessing traumatic event; the first one being
witnessing one’s own experience, the second one being witnessing one’s story of
their experience, and the third level is witnessing the process of witnessing.
Mack and his family undergo the first level of witnessing when they are inside
witnesses of their victimization by the kidnapping of Missy at the camp site.
Willie undergoes the second level of witnessing as he is the listener of Mack’s
story as well as the re-teller of it. The final level of witnessing is what
will help Mack overcome the event as he starts to realize the process of
witnessing what he is going through.
Willie
isn’t the only one who is involved as a listener in the second level of
witnessing. The Holy Trinity, which Mack meets at the Shack, Jesus, Sarayu and
God, or Papa are also a witness to Mack’s story. Papa aids Mack in the reliving
and re-experiencing of the event by sending Mack an invitation back to the
abandoned shack, the scene of the crime where they came across poor Missy’s
bloody dress. As Mack and the three of them exchange dialogue about the
horrific event, Papa, Jesus and Sarayu become the receiver of Mack’s testimony.
Their purpose, therefore, is to serve as a “companion on the eerie journey of
the testimony” and share with Mack the mutual “struggle to go beyond the event
and not be submerged and lost in it” (Laub, 62).
Telling
one’s traumatic story could be a process filled with struggle and affliction as
one processes their memories and thoughts of a certain event in attempts to
piece their story together. “There are never enough words or the right words to
articulate the story that cannot be fully captured in thought, memory, and
speech” (Laub, 63). Because of the difficulty in telling their story, many
trauma survivors are fated to live their lives in an inevitable “loneliness and
bereavement.” Accordingly, Mack fell into an unpierceable silence when tackling
“the great sadness” he succumbed to ensuing Missy’s abduction and murder. “The
Great Sadness entered his life and he almost quit talking altogether” (Young,
13). According to Laub, it would be essential for survival that Mack breaks
through, talks and tells his story. One must express their imperative to tell
in order for the continuance of life. Mack, however, seemed temporarily at a
silent, frozen pause. “The survivors did not only need to survive so that they
could tell their stories; they also needed to tell their stories in order to
survive” (Laub, 63).
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| Relative Illustration (Created by Analiz Jee) |
According
to Laub, this incapability to overcome the stress of trauma in order to battle
silence makes the “impossibility of telling” that allows “silence about the
truth to commonly prevail.” It is important for Mack to defeat the silence
accompanied succeeding a traumatic event because the longer remains silent
about it, the longer it becomes distorted within one’s mind. “Survivors who do
not tell their story become victims of a distorted memory which causes an
endless struggle with and over a delusion” (Laub). Mack is already somewhat
delusional as the events cause him to question his prior beliefs and he becomes
quite blameful and angry towards God. A non-delusional Mack would not have
self-isolated himself emotionally from his family and friends who were unable
to “thaw his heart, or penetrate the bars of his self-imprisonment” until after
his experience with the divine trilogy during his re-visit to the shack.
Dori
Laub explains that one of the consequences of allowing a traumatic event to
become distorted in the mind is that it begins to affect one’s perception of
themselves. According to Laub’s account of a Holocaust survivor he interviewed
for the Fortunoff Video Archive, “her previous inability to tell her story had
marred her perception of herself. The untold events had become so distorted in
her unconscious memory as to make her believe that she herself, and not the
perpetrator, was responsible for the atrocities she witnessed.” The distorted
way in which she perceives herself causes her to fail at being an “authentic
witness” to her own self (Laub, 65).
Kate,
Missy’s sister is an excellent example of a character who fails to be an
authentic witness to herself. Her self-perception is false and distorted based
on her memory of the traumatic experience. She fell into a similar impenetrable
silence as well. “Kate seemed to have been affected the most, disappearing into
a shell, like a turtle protecting its soft underbelly from anything potentially
dangerous. It seemed that she would only poke her head out when she felt fully
safe, which was becoming less and less often. Mack and Nan both worried increasingly
about her, but couldn’t seem to find the right words to penetrate the fortress
she was building around her heart... It was as if something had died inside
her, and now was slowly infecting her from the inside, spilling out
occasionally in bitter words or emotionless silence” (Young, 39). Unlike Mack,
she didn’t get an invitation from Papa to help her overcome and tell her story
but Mack was given a valuable token of vital information as Sarayu, the
colorful and windy personification of the Holy Spirit, expressed to him how
Kate blames herself for the kidnapping and death of her sister. Her distorted
self-perception caused her to feel an unbearable guilt as she blamed herself
and not the perpetrator for the horrendous acts committed to Missy. “What Sarayu
told him was so obvious. It made perfect sense that Kate would blame herself.
She had raised the paddle that started the sequence of events that led to Missy
being taken” (Young, 133). Thanks to this enlightenment Sarayu helped him
achieve, he was able to console his daughter to overcome her own struggles when
he awoke from a coma. As he told her she shouldn’t blame herself, Kate’s
unspoken guilt came pouring out and she began her own process of healing
through dialogue and witnessing.
According
to Laub, “a witness is a witness to the truth of what happens during an event.
The truth of the event could have been recorded in perception and in memory,
either from within or without by any of a number of ‘outsiders’.” Willie is an
outside witness and friend of Mack who records the story. Laub believes that
“ultimately, God himself could be the witness.” In The Shack God is personified and literally becomes a witness and
receiver of testimony as Papa exchanges dialogue with Mack and tries to help
him overcome the tragedy. “‘Well, Mackenzie Allen Phillips,’ she laughed,
causing him to look up quickly, ‘I am here to help you.’ If a rainbow makes a
sound, or a flower as it grows, that was the sound of her laughter. It was a
shower of light, an invitation to talk, and Mack chuckles along with her, not
even knowing or caring why” (Young, 87). Through talking and engaging in
dialogue with Mack, the Holy Trinity was able to convince Mack to let go of his
bottled emotions, express his story and eventually forgive the killer for what
he did in order to heal.
After
Mackenzie’s younger daughter died and he kept his feelings under lock and key
in the depths of his heart and soul, he was helplessly entangled in “the great
sadness.” However, with the assistance of Papa’s invitation, he was able to
relive the events, be relieved of his pain and patch up his relationship with
God through talking and testimony, which Laub calls a “dialogical process of
exploration and reconciliation of two worlds- the one that was brutally destroyed
and one that is- that are different and will always remain so.” Mack felt as if an immense weight had been
lifted from his shoulders once repressed memories began to come back to him and
he let out his words, tears, anger and rage during his journey to and
experience in the shack in which Missy’s blood-stained red dress was found on
that dreadful camping trip three years earlier.
Although
the events happened in his dreams while he was in a coma for four days after
crashing his car on his way to the shack, there was a noticeable difference in
Mack when he awoke. Not only did his visions help him to find Missy’s
undiscovered body in order to bury it and help the entire family carry on and
heal but Mack woke up with a profound transformation. The great sadness was
gone and he was ready to begin a life filled with happiness and simplicity.
Laub
considers testimony as being an essential part in the process of facing loss.
Although it doesn’t undo what was done or bring back the dead, it does offer a
sense of relief that allows possible repossession of yourself and life after
being faced with a traumatic experience. Overcoming silence and participating
in testimony is “the realization that the lost ones are not coming back; the
realization that what life is all about is precisely living with an unfulfilled
hope; only this time with the sense that you are not alone any longer” (Laub,
74). The Shack really shows how it is
necessary to eventually be open and expressive about your feelings, and not to
repress memories in order to alleviate depression and the strong, passionate
emotions that are accompanied after trauma has occurred and continue to attempt
living a fulfilled life.
