Title: Individual Trauma and Ethics of Memory in Andrew’s Brain

Abstract: In the last of his fictional works Andrew’s Brain, E. L. Doctorow employs the narrative form of dialogue one between an anonymous Doc and the trauma victim Andrew who is a cognitive scientist. The 9/11 event does not appear in the novel literally, but the story points directly to the great trauma-evoking event and its influences on how to memorize the traumatic event. This article argues that Doctorow endows Andrew, the trauma victim, with the ability of self-analysis and the individual memory of history, family and self to expose the government’s power over collective memory, and advocates the ethics of memory based on forgetfulness and forgiveness.

Keywords: E. L. Doctorow, Andrew’s Brain, individual trauma, ethics of memory

Author: Yun Zhu, Associate Professor, School of Foreign Studies, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China.