Trauma, Memory and Latency in Diário da queda, by Michel Laub

Abstract

The novel Diário da queda, by Michel Laub, recounts the memoirs of Shoah, who narrates the repercussions of tragedy on three generations of the same family. The narrative techniques employed to construct the stories — first-person narration telling his own story, interspersed with the recollections of others in a spiraling blend of the past, present and future without clearly defining the origins of the suffering resulting from past traumas — give an insight into how the effects of the past, extended into the present through writing, are inescapable even though, paradoxically, the act of writing is itself used in an attempt to purge the past.