The Analysis of PTSD Suffered by Violet Markey in Jennifer Niven’s Novel All the Bright Places

Abstract

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is one or more traumatic event experienced or witnessed directly by someone in the form of death or death threats, serious injury, or threat’s to one physical or self-integrity resulting in extreme fear to a feeling of helplessness. All The Bright Places is an adult-fiction novel written by an American novelist, Jennifer Niven, this paper will be focus on the female main character, Violet Markey, who suffers from PTSD after she experienced a car accident with her sister and make her sister passed away. The objective of this paper is to analyze the portrayal of PTSD on the character of Violet Markey, including the symptoms, effect, and causes. This paper using two sources of data, main data which is from the novel itself and supporting data is taken from book, article journal, and previous related research. To analyze the symptoms and causes of PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Theory from Gerald C. Davison will be applied in this paper, to support the theory above, researcher also using DSM-V by American Psychiatric Association to determine the effect of PTSD. The result indicated that Violet Markey is suffering PTSD and fulfill several points of the symptoms according to the theory: she is re-experiencing traumatic event by recollecting memory and appear on her dream, avoidance of stimuli, and increased tension. The causes of her PTSD according to DSM-V classified as Brain Structural Cause because Violet is experiencing traumatic event in her life and the brain processing the emotions and memories that lead to a feeling of fearness.