41
4.3 Gayle’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Wilson, Nathan, O’Leary, and Clark 152 state that post traumatic stress disorder is a form of anxiety disorder triggered by a traumatic event and
characterized by intrusive thoughts, intense psychological reactivity, and avoidance of the stimuli associated with trauma. If we have a traumatic
experience and have troubles in getting back to our regular life and connecting with others, we may suffer from post traumatic stress disorder PTSD. Someone
who is diagnosed with PTSD must have been in a situation in which he was afraid for his or her safety and for his or her life and also she or he must have
experienced something that made her or him frightened and terrified. It is very common for the sufferer to have nightmares, feel fearful or numb, and also to find
it difficult to stop thinking about what has happened. In the novel it is stated that Gayle undergoes all of those effects which can be seen from the symptoms that
are analyzed as follows:
4.3.1 Flashbacks and nightmares
At this stage the sufferer will find theirselves re-experiencing the event again and again. Gayle’s post traumatic stress disorder begins when she has
flashbacks and nightmares. Gayle has persistently re-experienced one or two things in some ways. Those are recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of
the event, including images and thoughts. I could not get out of my mind the picture of his face as he killed my
mother, or her desperate cries for me to help. I replayed the scene over and over, hearing her begging me to get help and trying to think of how I could
– and should – have saved her Sanders 139.
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
42 Here Gayle cannot forget her father’s face when he kills her mother and
always remembers the scary scene over and over. So this is Gayle’s flashback of her traumatic event. When Gayle arrives at her grandmother’s house, she thinks
she sees a cut-out image of her mother lying on the grass in their garden, but she is not sure whether she imagines it or not Sanders 124. According to Wilson,
Nathan, O’Leary, and Clark 152, the traumatic event is persistently re- experienced in one or more ways, for example recurrent and intrusive distressing
recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions, recurrent distressing dreams of the event, acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were
recurring including a sense of relieving experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes.
Again, this is proof that Gayle has the re-collection of the way her mother has died by seeing a cut-out image of her mother. Although Gayle does not realize
that she has re-collections, this is a kind of symptom of post traumatic stress disorder.
Based on the analysis above, we can conclude that Gayle re-experiences the event again and again. According to the theory of Wilson, Nathan, O’Leary,
and Clark 152 about post traumatic stress disorder, she also has some re- collections of the traumatic event.
4.3.2 Being on guard
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