Nor Any Drop To Drink: A Case Study Of Denise In AD

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Recommended: Personal narrative of a hurricane victim

Water, Water, Everywhere; Nor any Drop to Drink: A Case Study of Denise in AD

In Josh Neufeld’s Trauma novel, A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge the personal aspects of Hurricane Katrina are emphasized and explored. The book follows representative Katrina survivors, highlighting their experiences and coping with the aftermath of the storm. None of characters in the book are presented as having the “right” answers, but Denise, had a full experience of the chaos, horror, and destruction that Katrina inflicted on New Orleans. She had full exposure of the traumatic event, and the novel gives the reader a unique insight into her experiences.
Denise is a counselor with a graduate degree who works with many battered women. She is sensitive to vulnerable individuals who have experienced racism, sexism, mental health issues, and are economically disadvantaged. Denise also has had personal experiences of trauma including poverty and racism, similar to her clients. The novel suggests through the settings and the narrative that her trauma and that of others is a personal affair. Each person processes trauma in different ways. It is difficult to assign a general meaning of trauma without considering ones backgrounds, resources, and experience.
Aside from narrative and detail, Neufeld uses color and type styles throughout the book to indicate the changing atmosphere and moods. Hartman, an expert in trauma theory describes the use of color and light in the trauma novel as “The paradigm of coming-to-knowledge, expressed often as a movement from darkness to light” (Hartman 263). At first in A.D. the colors are uniform, but they begin to degrade and mix as the storm displaces and detaches the New Orleanians amongst it. He begins the story i...

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A.D., covering only a few days in 2005 and brief reports from Denise and others in 2008, concentrates mostly on the traumatic event, Katrina, rather than the coping or not coping with physical and psychic disorders. It lingers as an unexplained unexpected horror that left deep scars on both Denise and New Orleans. Denise, who has the fullest experience of it, comes closest to suggesting a remedy for, a happy ending, to trauma: she works, not broods, helps others and herself in practical ways like with the battered women Katrina survivors work, and she, at the very end of A.D. feels for the many people whose journey into trauma has been a one-way misery. The graphic novel may have a general message of the will to survive, of hope, but the main impact clearly is of the power and even mysterious effects of the event.

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