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Entire fields of study have been devoted to the exploration of human identity: what

constitutes it, how it is constructed, and how exactly it should even be defined. A great deal of

literature similarly examines the topic of identity through thematic analysis, and literature aimed

at adolescent audiences as they become more fully aware of their own identities for the first time

tends to tackle this theme in a particularly cognizant fashion. In addition to examining human

identity for the sake of fiction, then, it seems worthwhile to examine how fictitious explorations

of human identity illuminate the subject. This inquiry therefore attempts to investigate the

specific central question, “How can trauma influence the formation of identity?” in relationship

to fictional works such as Chris Crutcher’s Whale Talk from a perspective grounded in

psychological theory.

Theory and analysis alike operate under a definition of identity and its development

conceptualized as “a multidimensional process primary located at the level of the individual, but

simultaneously informed by that individual’s interactions with others and within specific

contexts” (Shalka 741). Trauma, meanwhile, has been historically very difficult to define, largely

because “it is a topic that is investigated across a verity of fields and disciplines in addition to

occurring within the multidimensionality of human experience,” but it is generally understood to

encompass the majority of severe physically or psychically damaging events; the subjective

manner in which individuals then experience such events makes trauma all the more personal

(743). The sheer number of individuals who experience traumatic events early in their lives

under this definition may be shocking to some, as studies at multiple educational institutions

suggest that over seventy-five percent of their undergraduate populations have already

experienced trauma before attending college (Frazier 456) (Shalka 741). Such statistics are
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incredibly poignant when considered alongside the importance of adolescence and young

adulthood relative to other stages of life in the process of identity formation.

A wealth of research already exists on the adverse effects of various traumas, particularly

those experienced in childhood that are eventually carried into adulthood. Even beyond

conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, research suggests a causality between

childhood trauma and substance abuse, depression, OCD, anxiety, and other mental health

problems or behavioral disorders later in life. In combination with difficulties in regulating

emotion that trauma may lead to, these adverse effects are likely to impact the ongoing process

of identity development that all human beings undergo, creating confusion in the lives of

children and adolescents especially (Dereboy et al. 148). Perhaps because it so often acts as a

distinct interruption in an individual’s life, traumatic events may lead individuals to question

their understanding of their own identities as their behaviors change in response to said events

and their “sense of consistency” is disrupted (Shalka 743). While this may lead to periods of

great inner turmoil, it may also lead to introspection that allows for more self-awareness as

individuals shape their identities moving forward. For better or for worse, many trauma survivors

note their need to re-conceptualize at least parts of their identities because of their experiences,

as though trauma itself forced them to confront their own understandings of the self directly

(Webb and Jobson 104). Trauma, then, may become a part of the self that alters an individual’s

conceptualization of their1 own identity to a certain extent without completely altering it (Shalka

757), although those who must contend with PTSD are relatively more likely to strongly define

themselves through the lens of their trauma (Webb and Jobson 103).

1
Singular “they” and its variations are used here and throughout this essay both for their semantic and rhetorical
usefulness and for the sake of including individuals who do not identify under society’s constructed gender binary in
their scope.
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Seemingly no character in Chris Crutcher’s Whale Talk has made it through their

adolescence without experiencing trauma of some sort. This makes the novel a pertinent case

study when examining the question of how exactly the identity conceptualization process is

depicted in fiction. When comparing the paths and identities of characters such as T.J. Jones,

Chris Coughlin, and Andy Mott, it is incredibly apparent just how varied paths and identities

shaped by similar trauma can be. The reader learns early on that T.J., the novel’s first-person

narrator, was adopted at a young age after his biological mother was deemed unfit to care for

him, and that this has an incredible impact on the young man that he becomes. Despite quite a bit

of counselling in the immediate aftermath of this familial change to contend with anger issues

that T.J. attributes to loss, neglect (Crutcher 67), and a general feeling of not being wanted (3),

he continuously falls back to rage as a first-resort tactic with which to cope with the

circumstances around him even as a high-school student. While this rage has mostly been

redirected from those who he feels have wronged him personally towards those who needlessly

prey on others, it is still intense and even occasionally violent, as is the case when T.J. attempts

to chase down and attack classmate Mike Barbour after Barbour assaults one of their peers (194).

T.J. himself sees this as a fundamental part of his identity that he has very little conscious control

over, musing, “Sometimes I trick myself into thinking I’m this righteous dude who stands up for

the downtrodden [...] but the reality is, most of the time it’s not a choice” (57-58).

While T.J.’s self-awareness in this regard gestures to the type of post-traumatic

introspection that appears in Shalka’s research, as T.J. actively contends with questions of who

he is and conceptualizes his identity in a way that incorporates his trauma into his reasoning

without using it to define his entire being, other characters’ responses to trauma differ

dramatically. Chris Coughlin, whose brain damage and subsequent mental issues stem from
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being born to a mother with addiction problems and being abused by her boyfriend as a child

(19), is continuously re-traumatized when other students bully him in the wake of his older

brother’s death. Bullying is such a norm in schools across the country and in fiction alike that it

may be tempting to dismiss it as a lesser form of trauma, but the visceral language Crutcher uses

as he describes a scene in which “tears squirt out of Chris’s terrified eyes and his entire body

trembles” while being pinned to a locker (20) emphasizes the severity of this violence. It is out of

fear related to his trauma that Chris continuously responds to his bullies and greater community

with deference and meekness, to the point that it is difficult to differentiate how much of this

deference is merely a response to a current perceived threat and how much of it has been

internalized as part of how Chris understands his own identity. An examination of fellow swim

team member Andy Mott’s aggressive yet aloof personality presents similar issues; the loss of

Mott’s leg to gangrene, subsequent need for a prosthetic leg, and diagnosed personality disorder

all stem from traumatic experiences of being abused and molested (149) by his mother’s various

ex-boyfriends according to Mott himself (225), but the novel offers little insight into Mott’s

personality as a child prior to this trauma.

What is interesting about both Chris and Mott is the manner in which their identities

change and develop throughout the novel. Chris’s enthusiasm and confidence shine through

more frequently as he begins to feel safe socializing with other members of his swim team, while

Mott shifts from acting detached around this team to showing moments of incredible kindness

and selflessness. It may be worth questioning the role that community and support systems play

in shaping identity in the wake of trauma, as it is largely through formed friendship and a sense

of communal identity as swim team members that these changes take place. While T.J., Chris,

and Mott all have different personalities and needs, community and positive human connection
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may be the key factor leading to moments of introspection and the actualization of positive

characteristics for all three of them. The implications of this analysis makes the work that

modern social justice movements such as Tarana Burke’s “Me Too” campaign seem all the more

important; as the voices of those who have been traumatized are amplified in the public

consciousness and discourse, movements like “Me Too” stress the need to address systematic

problems and build up marginalized communities while simultaneously acknowledging the

validity of different experiences and identities. On the other hand, movements such as the

Women’s March on Washington in early 2017 reveal the ways in which putting this ideology

into practice can be difficult. The march was in many ways a response to the election of

President Donald Trump and a means of denouncing his infamous “Grab them by the pussy”

quote from 2005; hundreds of thousands of women demonstrated in support of women’s rights

using a platform that was founded with the intention of promoting intersectional issues while

combatting sexual assault and the belittlement of women’s trauma. Unfortunately,

“disproportionate attention to the voices of white women” (Brewer and Dundes 49) often led to

identity erasure for marginalized groups such as black and transgender women during what was

meant to be an inclusionary event. The Women’s March is an example of how communities that

are unable to understand that the acknowledgement of their privilege does not invalidate their

own trauma or identities are unable to meet the needs of all individuals, and how those whose

identities have already been marginalized suffer for it.

There are, of course, countless novels beyond Whale Talk that make for unique case

studies in the examination of how trauma may affect identity formation, and Suzanne Collins’s

The Hunger Games is one such text that depicts an extremely heightened version of real-world

trauma in the dystopian world of Panem. The premise of the novel and the series it serves as the
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first volume in, in which children and teenagers (“tributes”) must compete in a televised fight to

the death, places a great emphasis on the constructed nature of identity and the various ways that

trauma can shift how it is conceptualized. The facades that many of the tributes construct in

order to appeal to their audience inevitably collapse as the incredible trauma of the Games builds

up over time and different aspects of tributes’ identities reveal themselves in moments of

desperation or vulnerability. Protagonist Katniss Everdeen is no exception to this pattern despite

the incredible willpower she possesses. While the novel’s early chapters make it clear that

Katniss’s identity at home is defined by her rebellious streak and sense of familial responsibility

(9), she begins the Games by presenting herself as more innocent and feminine in order to appeal

to sponsors, giggling girlishly while pretending to be infatuated by long dresses for her

audience’s benefit (128). It is an act that she cannot maintain in the face of the trauma she deals

with in the Games. This trauma, contextualized by Katniss’s isolation from her family and

support system, leads her to form unexpected connections and think of herself as a kinder person

who places more value on interpersonal bonds with characters such as Rue and Peeta (372) while

clinging onto her desire to rebel against the unjust forces around her.

Katniss finds herself trapped within the annual Games yet again in the novel’s sequel,

and there are moments in which she completely abandons both her newfound compassionate

values and her more ingrained chaotic nature for the sake of her own survival. These moments

tend to be extremely circumstantial to the point that Katniss comes across as inconsistent in the

same way that many young adults whose lives have been interrupted by trauma do. She is, for

instance, fixated on the idea of running away from home mere hours before proclaiming her

intentions to “stay right here and cause all kinds of trouble” (Catching Fire 119). While Katniss

is just as introspective as T.J. is, she spends the majority of the novel in the midst of the Games
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continuously being re-traumatized without the kind of access to peaceful moments of respite and

reflection that T.J. has. As such, even active attempts to understand her own identity and

inconsistency tend to end in confusion and further turmoil. While some sense of a more stable

self-conceptualized identity comes back into Katniss’s life as the Games end, her journey

throughout the series suggests that even the most resilient individuals are unlikely to move

forward through life completely unaffected by their traumatic experiences.

Further credence is lent to this idea when examining the operation of trauma and identity

in Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts, a science-fiction slave narrative set onboard a

starship in which protagonist Aster sets the stage for a full-scale revolt of black workers against

their white oppressors. Death, disease, and sexual assault are so commonplace for Aster and her

fellow “lowerdeckers” that they are often normalized even as they take their physical and mental

toll. A child uses sarcasm to cope with the amputation of their leg (12) just as Andy Mott does,

but both traumatic losses are marked by scars, physical reminders that Aster compares to a

“witch’s curse” keeping trauma alive through the body in spite of any repression that might

occur (100). Aster herself spends the novel simultaneously attempting to find a way off of the

starship and disturbing its current hierarchy; her identity is most frequently characterized by her

firm defiance against white authority. This complicates Aster’s ability to heal from the various

forms of assault forced upon her or maintain a stable identity because it creates a self-

perpetuating cycle: her identity is predicated upon her continuous resistance, but resistance leads

to punishment and new traumatic moments that further disrupt her identity.

Aster attempts to solve this problem and preserve her identity by violently destroying and

escaping the systems around her that are the source of her trauma in a manner that Katniss

similarly emulates but is far less conscious of and that the characters of Whale Talk never
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consider. In this way, the dystopian and fantastical settings of Panem and the HSS Matilda ship

offer a space for more imaginative resistance to traumatic oppression than the realistic setting of

Crutcher’s novel does, although An Unkindness of Ghosts also has incredibly close allegorical

ties to the history of the real world. The rebellion that Aster participates in and subsequent

attempts to create a new community away from white domination are events that mirror

rebellions and violent uprisings of black slaves around the world. The Haitian Revolution in

particular, due to its relative success, is marked by a similar overhaul of white supremacist rulers

and the creation of a new social order in what was once known as the French colony of Saint

Domingue (Peguero 34). The establishment of the Republic of Haiti in 1804 was only possible

because of the violent rebellion that African slaves began over ten years prior (34-35), and in

some ways the identity of the entire country may be seen as built off of the trauma that these

slaves underwent. Aster’s character, then, serves as a lens through which we can examine the

identity and trauma of the individual as the process of identity development takes place for the

entirety of their community, as well as a reminder of the personal experiences that may be taken

for granted when considering the trauma of an entire nation.

Contextualized by each other in addition to theoretical frameworks, current social

movements, and historical events, the above works of fiction emphasize the wildly disruptive

nature of trauma in addition to the incredibly varied responses that individuals have to it. Those

responses and their effects on individual identities are certainly shaped by the community and

support systems that said individuals have around them in addition to the extremity and

frequency of traumatic events—re-traumatization in particular plays a large role in keeping

characters from multiple works stagnant in their self-development processes—but are also so

incredibly specific to the personalities and circumstances of unique human beings that they are
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difficult to predict. Perhaps the biggest takeaway of this inquiry is in the very question that it

began with; asking how trauma can influence the formation of identity posits that answers will

be varied, and the introspective exploration that such a question might prompt is the very sort of

reflective examination that may lead to a more stable understanding of the self.

Works Cited

Brewer, Sierra, and Lauren Dundes. “Concerned, meet terrified: Intersectional feminism and the

Women’s March.” Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 69, 2018, pp. 49-55.

Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. New York, Scholastic Inc., 2009.

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York, Scholastic Inc., 2008.

Crutcher, Chris. Whale Talk, New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.

Dereboy, Çigdem, Esra Sahin Demirkapi, Mehmet Sakiroglu, and Cennet Safak Öztürk. “The

Relationship Between Childhood Traumas, Identity Development, Difficulties in

Emotion Regulation and Psychotherapy.” Turkish Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 29, no. 3,

2018, pp. 147-158.

Frazier, Patricia, et al. “Traumatic Events Among Undergraduate Students: Prevalence and

Associated Symptoms.” Journal of Counseling Psychology, vol. 56, no. 3, July 2009, pp.

450-650.

Peguero, Valentina. “Teaching the Haitian Revolution: Its Place in Western and Modern World

History.” The History Teacher, vol. 32, no.1, November 1998, pp. 33-41.

Shalka, Tricia R. “Saplings in the Hurricane: A Grounded Theory of College Trauma and

Identity Development.” The Review of Higher Education, vol. 42, no. 2, Winter 2019, pp.

739-764.
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Solomon, Rivers. An Unkindness of Ghosts. Akashic Books, Brooklyn, 2017.

Webb, Heather, and Laura Jobson. “Relationships between self-consistency, trauma-centered

identity, and post-traumatic adjustment.” Clinical Psychologist, vol. 15, 2011, pp. 103-

111.