@article{BatlleGavín:16315,
author = "Batlle Gavín, María and Martínez Alfaro, María Jesús",
title = "{Memory, Trauma and the Perpetrator Figure:
Transgenerational Responses to the Holocaust in Rachel
Seiffert's The Dark Room}",
year = "2014",
note = "This essay focuses on Rachel Seiffert’s novel The Dark
Room (2001), which is analysed here in the context of
Holocaust-related narratives and as an illustration of the
so-called “perpetrator fiction”. The term
“perpetrator” may be understood as referring to those
who actively participated in the genocide, but has also
been used in connection with people differently involved
in/affected by the event, other than victims and their
descendants. Thus, the main characters in the three
novella-length stories that make up The Dark Room represent
what is known as “ordinary Germans”, who did not commit
atrocities but whose lives were (or are still) affected by
the Holocaust. The protagonists of each of the three
narratives are young Germans belonging to different
generations and their respective stories offer the reader a
not very frequently explored perspective when it comes to
the field of fictional literature in general, and English
fiction, in particular. Literary representations of the
Holocaust have flourished in a period marked by the
“memory boom” and the development of Trauma Studies,
which provide a context for my analysis of Seiffert’s
work and constitute the main focus of the introductory
section to this essay. After this introduction, I deal with
each story, delving into main themes and motifs and paying
special attention to the protagonists’ evolution. My
analysis tries to highlight the effects of the Holocaust
through time, the workings of postmemory and the way in
which traumatic memories may affect the descendants of
those who did not live the events themselves, included, as
is the case in Seiffert’s work, perpetrators’
descendants. The final section ties together the issues
dealt with in the previous analysis and also comments on
the author’s stylistic choices. I try to show how the
latter illustrate the way in which language/words fall
short when dealing with traumatic events, but I also relate
them to the central role of photography in The Dark Room.
All this makes for reflection on the value and the
shortcomings of narrative and photography when it comes to
representing the horrors of the past and its haunting
ghosts in the present.",
}