Silent Echoes: An Introspective Journey of Trauma and Emotional Stillness in Han Kang’s Fiction

Abstract

This study examines Han Kang’s articulation of trauma through stillness and non-verbal expression in her novels The White Book and We Do Not Part. Departing from Western paradigms that privilege narrative closure and verbal catharsis, Kang’s works engage with trauma via silence, fragmentation, and embodied experience. The White Book creates a meditative space through sparse language and temporal suspension, in which grief is explored through white objects and quiet observation. Likewise, We Do Not Part presents trauma, particularly inherited and gendered violence, through the interior lives of characters whose suffering is registered somatically rather than spoken. This research argues that Kang’s aesthetics of stillness function as a narrative and ethical strategy, offering an alternative mode of emotional expression and resistance. By situating Kang’s work within trauma studies, affect theory, and Korean Seon philosophy, the study explores how her representations of suffering challenge Western assumptions about healing and testimony. Her work considers how Korean and East Asian philosophical frameworks, such as Buddhist and Zen notions of silence and stillness, alongside theoretical lenses of affect studies that explore embodied experience and intensity, may inform the author’s literary approach. Ultimately, this project contributes to trauma studies and global literature by foregrounding non-verbal, bodily, and culturally specific forms of mourning in Kang’s evolving oeuvre.