Reimagining the Self: Trauma, Creativity and Reconstruction of Identity in Stephen King’s Duma Key and Misery

सार

Trauma collapses the individual’s identity, fragments the memory and haunts through nightmares. This paper analyses the reconstruction of identity surmounting traumatic events in Stephen King’s Duma Key and Misery. The lives of the protagonists, Edgar Freemantle in Duma Key and Paul Sheldon in Misery are derailed by psychological distress. Paul’s prolonged captivity and physical assault, and Edgar’s physical injury and aphasia function as traumatic episodes that tear down the individual’s self. Annie Wilkes (captor) in Misery and Perse (supernatural entity) in Duma Key function as an external force in destabilising the protagonist’s identities and creating tension. While existing research has primarily examined these novels through the lens of psychological analysis, is less examined. gothic fiction and disability studies, the creative process in reconstructing the identity after trauma This paper asserts that painting and writing act as a creative process that helps in transforming the individual from victim to survivor. Through psychoanalytical theories and with the help of trauma studies, the study analyses that creative arts of both novels run parallel to confront trauma and reconstruct the identities.  This article illustrates the creative process as a central mechanism which helps traumatic experiences to witness and act as a testimony to reconstruct the identity.