Bearing Witness to Trauma: An Analysis of Reader Empathy in Garrard Conley's Autobiographical Memoir "Boy Erased"

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject American Studies, grade: 1,7, University of Paderborn (Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften), course: American Trauma Narratives, language: English, abstract: Boy Erased can be read as a trauma narrative with a special focus on the trauma narrative's function of creating reader empathy described by Laurie Vickroy. Therefore, this paper argues that Boy Erased offers the narrative strategies of the first-person point of view, interior monologues, foregrounding, and providing insight views into another character's thoughts and feelings to fulfill the trauma narrative function of creating reader empathy.
To prove this thesis, the paper's content is structured like the following. Firstly, the text gives a theoretical background on ex-gay conversion therapy, its harmful effects as well as its current relevance to the United States. Moreover, the paper defines reader empathy in trauma literature as described by Vickroy .Here, the chapter lays out the most important concepts for the analysis of reader empathy in the primary text. After that, the relevance of reader empathy specifically in Boy Erased will be pointed out. The next chapter covers an elaborate analysis of how Conley engages reader empathy throughout the memoir. Finally, the paper's central findings will be summarized in a conclusion with an outlook on further research.