The present research seeks to critically analyse Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) and Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember (2003) in terms of Judith Herman’s psychoanalytic concepts of hyperarousal, intrusion, and constriction, which are the tree symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Moreover, the research resorts to Herman’s notions of safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection to represent the possibility of achieving recovery in a post-apocalyptic world. The Road and The City of Ember deal with characters living in a post-apocalyptic territory where there is a constant clash between traumatic experiences and survival instincts. Even though both novels share some basic similarities in their aims and leitmotifs, the study will demonstrate that McCarthy’s, as a male novelist, and DuPrau’s, as a female novelist, approaches are highly different concerning representation of conflicts and their narrative voices. The research is an attempt to orchestrate a traumatic post-apocalyptic reading of both novels and it proposes to discuss the traumatic experiences of the characters trundling in a post-apocalyptic setting.
