Sample Essay
Forgetting or Remembering: Recovery from Trauma in “The Watch” and “I Lost My Talk”
How does someone recover after a traumatizing incident? Should one try to forget, or should they forgive? In “The Watch”, the protagonist suffers the traumatizing experience of losing his family and friends during World War II. In “I Lost My Talk”, the protagonist suffers the loss of her language and culture. In both pieces, the protagonists suffer extreme oppression and must find ways to recover from their trauma. In “The Watch” the protagonist chooses to try to forget his past, whereas in “I Lost My Talk”, the protagonist chooses to heal by recovering her culture and language.
In “The Watch”, the protagonist is reunited with a gold watch that symbolizes his past, which he re-buries in an effort to leave the past behind and move on. Throughout the story, it is implied that the watch holds great significance to the protagonist. When he unearths it after twenty years, he states, “could this thing … be my gift … my past” (Wiesel, 4). This statement suggests that the watch is a “memory of the past”, a symbol of the way things were (pg. 4). However, like his past has been damaged by the loss of family and friends from war, the watch has likewise lost its luster: it has become “unrecognizable [and] revolting” (pg. 4). Perhaps not wanting to be reminded of his past, the protagonist chooses to rebury the watch, and his past with it. In doing so, he hopes to provide “an epilogue to [his] childhood”, and closure to his trauma.
In contrast, the protagonist in “I Lost My Talk” tries to recover her memories of the past. Like in “The Watch”, the protagonist of “I Lost My Talk” suffered horrific trauma, but at the hands of the Canadian colonial society. Due to the time spent in residential schools, her language and culture had become a “scrambled ballad” (Joe, 9). In other words, she can no longer express herself in accordance to her culture. However, instead of abandoning her past, she decides to reclaim it. In contrast to the aggression of the colonial society as her language and culture are “snatched away” (Joe, 5), the protagonist “gently…offer[s] her hand” to try to recover her language and culture. In doing so, she hopes to recover a vital part of herself, such that she can “teach you about [herself]” (Joe, 15).
In conclusion, there are multiple ways to recover from a traumatizing event. In “The Watch” the protagonist chooses to try to forget his past and move forward in life, whereas in “I Lost My Talk”, the protagonist tries to recover her culture and language, to reclaim a vital part of her identity. Regardless of whether one chooses to forget or remember trauma bravely, recovery from trauma is clearly a difficult, but necessary process.