Narrating survival in Primo Levi's If this is a man, and The drowned and the saved

Abstract

Abstract This research report explores the process of narrating survival in Primo Levi’s If This Is A Man and The Drowned and The Saved. The central objective is to understand the process of psychological survival is narrated in Levi’s autobiographical narrative. To this end, I have used a psychoanalytical framework to understand the traumatic impact of Auschwitz on subjectivity as well as to position subjectivity in relation to autobiographical narrative. I shall argue that the trauma of Auschwitz resulted in an eroded and shattered subjectivity and that narrative offers a space in which the reconstruction of that subjectivity can be negotiated.