TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES IN EKA KURNIAWAN'S NOVEL SEPERTI DENDAM,

The emergence of trauma study with the publication of Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History have gained significant interest in analyzing traumatic experiences in literary works. Literary trauma is seen as the media and alternative to read the wound and trauma through narration and fiction in the form of an anxiety plot. This study aims to analyze the traumatic experiences in Eka Kurniawan's novel entitled Seperti Dendam, Rindu Harus Dibayar Tuntas. This research is descriptive qualitative in nature. The objects of this research are the traumatic events and experiences in Kurniawan's novel. The data were collected by note taking and highlighting the relevant traumatic event and analyzed using the concept of trauma and memory of Cathy Caruth. The result shows that the characters in this novel respond to trauma differently such as having intrusive thoughts, re-experiencing the trauma through flashbacks and dreams, avoidance, and having negative feelings and moods. The novel shows that the sociocultural environment can become the greatest source of trauma as well as offer the healing process for the traumatized through compassion and understanding. The characters' traumatic experience is narrated by the unknown godlike narrator. Through the portrayal of the characters, Kurniawan reveals how pain, suffering, and traumatic experiences lead the characters to gain high self-esteem, self-knowledge, and philosophical understanding of social reality.


INTRODUCTION
Human life is an interesting phenomenon despite all the complexities and problems they experience including dreadful traumatic experiences such as accidents, the death of the loved one, abuses, or natural disasters. Without any warnings, those traumatic events can happen to every person when they are not mentally prepared and those can also trigger people to experience trauma. According to the American Psychiatric Association, trauma or traumatic neurosis referred to a response to an event "outside the range of usual human experience" including human and natural catastrophes (Caruth, 1995).
That event or events can be a confrontation to actual or threatened death, severe injury, or sexual abuse. Trauma can happen to someone experiencing or witnessing the traumatic event directly or indirectly.
The term trauma is originated from the Greek word for "wound" which refers to a serious injury to a person's body. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, trauma means a very difficult or unpleasant experience that causes someone to have mental or emotional problems usually for a long time (Trauma | Definition of Trauma by Merriam-Webster, 2020). Later, trauma not only refers to a physical wound but also a psychological wound. A psychologist Robert Jay Lifton on "Survivor Experience and Traumatic Syndrome" insinuates that trauma happens when the survivor had faced death. He argues that encountering death instigates individual psy-chological disturbances because it forces individuals to reassess the final ultimate of life (Lifton, 1995: 131). To be stumbled upon death encounter means encountering something resistant and incomprehensible in the man's mind which eventually causes disintegration of the psyche and individual inner catastrophe, what he called 'castration anxiety'. Thus, in trauma, there is something enigmatic, catastrophic, and extreme that is incomprehensible upon man's mind causing splitting of self's integration and dissociation. In other words, trauma can be an individual's response to something that is too shocking and overwhelming that the man's mind is unable to grasp which eventually falls into the psyche and cause disintegration, distortion, and rupture.
Trauma and its theory itself had been discussed, reviewed, and pondered since its first emergence in the late nineteenth century and was first gained its significant role in the post-World War I studies (Balaev, 2014: 4) In the Indonesian context, trauma can be found in realist literary works that focus more on the traumatic experiences triggered by political instabilities and disturbances.
Although as a present generation, we don't have the experience of trauma directly as the Indonesian facing the mass killing of 1965 (known as G30S PKI) or the reformation riot in 1998. We are affected by and are indirectly responsible for those traumatic events because we grow up with those histories to borrow Morris-Suzuki's term, we are "an implicated community" which may not be responsible for such acts of aggression in the sense of having caused them, but we are "implicated" in them, in the sense that they cause us (McGregor, 2013). In this case, authors also indirectly feel that they are part of the "implicated community" who responsible for the traumatic event or events, and thus influence the authors to write the traumatic experience in fiction to represent the history of violence in Indonesia. After all "literature becomes a traumatic escape" (Salam, 2020  This research draws upon Cathy Caruth's concept of trauma and memory to unveil the characters' psychological disturbance after experiencing trauma. Caruth proposes that "trauma is a response, sometimes delayed, to an overwhelming event or events, which takes the form of repeated, intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviors stemming from the event, along with numbing that may have begun during or after the experience, and possibly also increased arousal to (and avoidance of) stimuli recalling the event". (Caruth, 1995: 4).
Trauma is a record of past traumatic memory of events which means people have not fully understood the feeling of being traumatized when the event occurs, but they will have it after the shock and pass a few moments or years. So, traumatic memory is a delayed response after someone experiencing trauma.
From the above definition, it can be understood that the victim may respond to trauma differently. Being traumatized will often show traumatic symptoms such as often having hallucinations based on the traumatic events they experience and will appear in the form of dreams, memories, or thoughts. The victims can also become numb to things, feel excessively anx-Poetika : Jurnal Ilmu Sastra Vol. 8 No. 2, December 2020DOI 10.22146/poetika.55895 ISSN 23382503-4642 (online) ious, or trying to avoid things that can stimulate them to remember the traumatic events.
In line with Caruth, Maria Roots in Vickroy (2014: 133) also argue that victims of trauma may respond to trauma in an unsympathetic environment such as "egocentrisms, quickness to anger, social and emotional withdrawal, rumination or shutting down".
In line with those arguments, the trau- symptoms such as quickness to anger, easily irritate, behaving recklessly, or in a selfdestructive way, so they may also have a problem sleeping.
Based on the premise that the victim of trauma may respond to traumatic events differently, so this research aims to find out the characters' response to their traumatic experiences in the novel. Therefore, this study will treat the literary text as the representation of actual human life with its physiological aspects of traumatic experiences.

FINDING AND DISCUSSION
The finding and discussion of this research are divided into three parts. First, it discusses the traumatic experiences in the novel seen from the traumatic symptoms as proposed by experience. Caruth (1995)  with a pistol in his forehead as described in the following quotation: "The muzzle felt cold against his skin and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the pistol shining. And that was how, with his body trembling violently, this time from fear, with a pale face and quivering lips, unable to make a sound, Ajo Kawir was forced to watch those two polices take turns raping Rona Merah." (Kurniawan, 2017: 28) Ajo Kawir is encountering death and witnessing sexual abuse. These have disrupted his psyche too deeply, as Lifton argues that encountering death instigates individual psychological disturbances because it forces them to reassess the final ultimate of life (Lifton, 1995: 131). As Lifton's phrase, he is experiencing "castration anxiety" as narrated that "his body is trembling violently", "fear", "pale face and quivering lips, unable to make a sound". There is something lodged too deeply in his mind that the brutality of raping and encountering death. When Iwan Angsa asks what exactly happened, both of them just stare at each other and say nothing but "we don't know". They try to avoid talking about the traumatic event as illustrated in the following narration: "He didn't want Iwan Angsa to know what they'd done. He didn't want to add on to all their problems. He didn't want to talk about how the two policemen had gone to Rona Merah's house and raped that crazy woman." (Kurniawan, 2017: 32). Mr. Toto. He got used to asking her to help him with some small insignificant tasks, then sit beside her, put his shoulder close to hers, and his fingers would touch, squeeze her breasts naughtily while she was completing her tasks. This happened until one day that she experiences a traumatic event because Mr. Toto hugged her close from behind while she was sitting on his lap in the "Guidance Office".
"His left hand was holding the little girl's breast and the other hand was feeling around under her skirt…Iteung could feel something poking out insistently, touching her buttocks…then she felt something wet and sticky…Iteung quickly stood up, freeing herself, and looked back at the dark black genitals dropping on the chair" (Kurniawan, 2017: 162) Since that day, Iteung experiences trauma and psychological complex, having a strong feeling of anxiety but at the same time feeling of pleasure wanting to have sex. She responses to her trauma in the form of a haunted dream as if she re-experiences that tragic event.
"whenever she dreamed about that man, she would wake up dripping with sweat and her body would be hot, yet she'd be shivering. Her fingers would be trembling, her jaw would be clenched, but she could her teeth chattering. At the same time, she was wet. Slimy. Flooded. As if she longed for that blunt piece of urgent flesh" (Kurniawan, 2017: 162) She would wake up gasping, sweating and her face would be pale. The trauma that she experienced on that day leave something deeply in her mind and unconsciously drive Here, she experiences "inner catastrophe" as argued by Hartman (1995: 367)     her, but she is also being alienated in the society. She is being forced to silence and being insane. The society around her is reluctant and careless toward the incident. This is narrated that week after the shooting incident none wants to approach her house, to take care of her husband's body because the society does not smell anything since the house is far from the neighborhood, nor even cares when she is found dead in his husband graveyard the night after the raping incident. They inadvertently have forced Rona Merah to be silent by not offering any help or even care.
The socio-cultural environment not only forms the circumstances out of how trauma has Poetika : Jurnal Ilmu Sastra Vol. 8 No. 2, December 2020DOI 10.22146/poetika.55895 ISSN 23382503-4642 (online) been created but also provides or refuses the needed support for healing (Vickroy, 2014: 132). Societies, communities, or families propagate the alienation felt by the traumatized because they may want to preserve stability and protect themselves from vulnerability, avoid what survivors have experienced, and prevent survivors from sharing their experience with others or sometimes it is also willing to sacrifice the survivors for other goals (Vickroy, 2014: 131-132). He has taught him a hard lesson in life so he finds wisdom and tranquility after release from prison. This novel does not leave the traumatized alone but also offers compassionate friends and family to help them with the healing process.

The Narration of the Traumatic Experiences in Eka Kurniawan's Novel
According to Hartman (1995: 367), the traumatic experience is "one that cannot be made entirely conscious, in the sense of being fully retrieved or communicated without distortion". There is a gap between the trauma and the unspeakable experience; the gap to utter the unrepresentable event into something that can be comprehended by the human's mind. Hartman (1995: 540) Vol. 8 No. 2, December 2020DOI 10.22146/poetika.55895 ISSN 23382503-4642 (online) Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye (Heidarizadeh, 2015). "Only guys who can't get a hard fight with no fear of death," Iwan Angsa once said about Ajo Kawir. He was one of the small handful of people who knew that Ajo Kawir's penis couldn't stand up. He'd seen it, nestling like a newly hatched baby bird-curled into itself, looking hungry and cold." (Kurniawan, 2017:  "Iteung will always remember that time-when Mr. Toto's hands would fondle and squeeze them. Iteung would almost squeal, but she held it in. her pencil would fall from her trembling hand. And when Mr. Toto holding her close from behind. The man was sitting on a chair, embracing her, and Iteung was sitting on his lap. His left hand was holding the little girl's breast and the other hand was feeling around under her skirt…Iteung could feel something poking out insistently, touching her buttocks…then she felt something wet and sticky…Iteung quickly stood up, freeing herself, and looked back at the dark black genitals dropping on the chair. Iteung felt a pain in the crack between her legs. She tried to walk like usual, but it hurt there." (Kurniawan, 2017: 162) In this narration, it can be seen that Kurniawan as the writer plays the role of the godlike narrator. He recounts vividly the traumatic event as well as the traumatized inner feeling by portraying them through his character's memory and dream as in whenever she dreams about that man or in she will always remember that day. "A squadron (years later they realized that it was a troop of soldiers) came to that house. An article in the paper reported that Agus Klobot had been armed and had fought back before they shot him dead. But some people said the soldiers stormed the house, shooting blindly, and that Agus Klobot was riddled with bullets, right in front of Rona Merah as they were eating dinner. His blood splashed across his wife's face-and it wasn't just blood that sprayed out of the bullet holes, so did his stomach worms and the rice he'd just eaten. Others said the shooting occurred when the couple was in their bedroom making love. The soldiers made Agus Klobot finish his last orgasm in heaven. But the version that made the most sense had just one sniper carrying out the execution, shooting from a hiding place behind some trees when Agus Klobot opened the window. In any case, in all versions of the story, Agus Klobot was shot to death right before his wife's." (Kurniawan, 2017: 13) This novel portrays the characters' trau-