Alice Sebold's journey of trauma and recovery in Lucky

Rape is an anti-social phenomenon that needs to be dealt with extreme care since it not only has drastic effects on the victim but also on the colleagues, peers, family members and community people in their proximity. This is a book reaction paper on "Lucky" written by Alice Sebold, in which she recounts her experiences of the rape and her journey to recovery after that. The further sections of the paper would discuss her tragic encounter and her dilemmas in the efforts to counter the debilitating effects, and eventually overcome them, which is a lesson for all.

Issues to be Addressed

Reaction to Ms. Sebold's Journey After Rape

The short-term after-effects of Sebold's rape include shock, physical problems, soreness, and difficulty in walking. The long-term effects are disbelief, shame, guilt, depression, fear, anger, and sexual problem such as diseases or infections caused by forced sexual harassment, relationship problems, and flashbacks from the nightmare she had experienced. Other spiritual and emotional effects include loss of control, disorientation, aloofness, sense of vulnerability showing weakness, trying to stay away from social and personal engagements, numbness, change in her perception of the world, helplessness, and blame (Joyful Heart Foundation, n.d.).

Since she had to face her traumas on her own, Sebold's view of the world changed drastically from that of an enjoyable and lively place as depicted or believed to be, in prose and poetry (as she was studying "writing"). She even indulged in expressing such desolate, demeaning, and negative ideas in her writings, poetry, and novels. It was probably her way of venting her feelings that she could not share with anyone. She seemed to have no confidante, who could be trusted with her feelings. Her traumatic feelings overwhelmed her, making her weak and vulnerable -- a feeling she thought would never leave her, and one that she would have to endure alone. Her family seemed incapable of providing emotional support and empathy and providing her with the necessary strength to overcome the continued feelings of despair and delinquency, and move on with life. As such, she became more withdrawn and shared little with others.

To her credit, however, Sebold moved on with her life, though she found herself entangled within those sordid memories of the incident. Once she came across her rapist and all those memories came back in torrents, numbing her all over again. Moreover, when she learnt of a similar incident with another girl in her college years, she took it personally, and was traumatized again being reminded by memories of her tragedy. evidently Sebold tried to keep herself busy in writing, and the type of writing she chose for this purpose mostly involved rape victims, through which so that she could express her own experiences and the aftermath in the form of stories. The novel called "Monsters" detailed a rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl and passionately wrote her novel each day about such violence. After several revisions, it was transformed into "The Lovely Bones," which became a bestselling novel.

Some of the rape effects depicted aloofness, which was quite apparent as she used to live in a cabin in the woods without any electricity (Pennsylvania Center of the Book, n.d.). This reclusive living showed that she wanted to be on her own, bereft of company and social encumbrances whereby she sought to avoid facing the guilt and shame that overpowered her. As is often the case, she got herself into drugs and started experimenting of heroin. She sought succor and escape from her continued desperation through indulgence into such activities and 'bad' company to help her forget about the trauma; soon after that, she ended up joining a troubled Manhattan crowd.

However, in keeping with her positive traits, Sebold also tried involving herself into positive, meaningful activities such as writing that freed her from the guilt and shame as she wanted people to be aware of this very common societal problem. She became a professor at Hunter College. She moved to California and became the caretaker of Arts Colony where she earned $386 a month. It is clear that Sebold had been trying hard to make a comeback to a normal life by letting go what she had gone through; for that, she tried both good and bad paths so that she might find her inner peace. Her writings, however, mirrored her view of the world -- as being filled with violence, brutality and bad characters. I think it is very hard for any rape victim to conquer his or her fears so soon and start life in a new dimension.

Two Things Learnt about Rape and Recovery Process

Cognitive factors play a major role in facing and overcoming fears of the rape victim. Sebold faced fear, anger, confusion, despondency, and failure when she was sexually violated. Research suggests that trauma recovery process that involves reprogramming, integration and habituation of the images that took place on that incident day helps the victim gain normalcy and overcome the fears that set in. It directs the victim to a restoration stage of self-security (Chivers-Wilson, 2006). One thing that I learnt from rape and its recovery is that in today's highly advanced world where 'freedom of speech' and 'openness of media' is encouraged, we should take benefit from these two features since they can educate us about vices of the society that we remain ignorant of till we actually face them. Sebold did not know anything about rape until she became a victim herself. Today's children should be taught at a very early stage about the 'good touch' and 'bad touch' so that sexual harassment can be avoided from a very early age. Moreover, several attempts are now in practice to teach people on ways to fight the rapist.

Further, I learnt that the recovery process is the hardest for a rape victim, as was evidenced through experiences Sebold underwent. The victim has to be strong and believe in oneself to overcome the fears and distress faced after rape. towards healing and recovery, there are certain steps such as nurturing yourself, acknowledging that it happened, discover your inner feeling and trying to get out of it by talking or writing about it, learning what other victims must have experienced in similar cases, since that would give the strength to support oneself and stand up against it (Gagnon, 2015). The victim must be able to talk about it to someone as soon as possible since if she does not, she would be continuously harassed by her own psychological feelings such as depression, fear, anger, confusions and detachment from the relationships. In some severe cases, the victims try suicide.

For future, I learnt that rape is not the end of the world; although recovery can be the most arduous part but it is still possible. It takes all the courage of the victim and the willingness to fight the feelings of self-blame, guilt and shame since the victim feels that it is his or her fault. The first thing in recovery is forgiving oneself since such post-rape trauma becomes stronger when the victim does not let go of this blame. Getting his or her feelings out and accessing as much support as possible (in all forms -- physical, emotional, psychological, professional, personal, familial and societal) is the best way to recover. On the other hand, relevant education must be imparted in schools and colleges about this issue so that awareness is spread as far as possible. Students, especially the teenagers like Sebold, should be aware how to protect themselves from the rapists if they ever encounter one. It is not necessary that the rapist is a stranger; it can be anyone, even relatives, or close family members; hence, kids should be taught about it at an early age. Parents should be open to their kids on every kind of issue and should start educating them specifically about this issue when they reach the age of 15.

As an individual, we should all work towards a more aware, responsible and helpful society. Being a responsible citizen, I myself should be on the lookout for such pedophile individuals. I have the duty to protect possible victims and whenever I sense possibility of such incidents in my neighborhood and surrounding, I should not hesitate to help the likely victim, raise an alarm and warning signs for the society to take notice, and must also inform the police. We all have this obligation to save our children and fellow community members so that potential rapists are wary of harassing little children and teenagers. In future, that would spread the message to other community and society members and all would work together to put a halt to this shameless activity.

Conclusion

Rape leaves catastrophic, lifelong impacts on the victim, which the sufferer finds difficult to overcome. The above details of the paper indicated clearly that Sebold was tortured with the rape's aftereffects for several years after the incident took place. She was able to remember those moments very clearly in her mind even after decades. It rests upon the family members and other close relations to deal with the matter carefully since the sufferer is very fragile in terms of physical, mental and emotional effects. The future of our children and teenagers could only be secured only if we become more vigilant regarding the rapists and their activities. We also need to guide and educate our children and the sufferer to fight this issue and handle it in a balanced, knowledgeable manner to put such incidents behind and move on in the quest of a better, happy life into the future.