Slavery and Trauma in Andre Brink’s Philida

The present paper aims to examine the deep psychological and physical trauma that victims of slavery live with. The inhuman degradation that slaves are made to undergo underlines the aberration of this institutionalized evil. The essay will also highlight the sort of trauma that slave owners also live with. Andre Brink in the novel Philida was attempting to show the historical antecedents of South African slavery especially, in the Cape. He used his family historical documents to offer a close study of the trauma that slavery has caused millions over the centuries – from the mid seventeenth century to 1834 when slavery was abolished in South Africa. This makes the present study significant because it has delved into the physical and psychological cost of that evil. Philida is a recently published novel and eminent researchers have just started working on it. This work will analyze the novel using Trauma theory in order to underscore the debilitating effect that slavery has had on people in South Africa for more than three hundred years. Slavery has affected not only slaves but also their masters. The implication is that the feeling of trauma is felt both ways. Slavery has also put a lie to the feeling of white blood purity in South Africa. Philida had shown how slave masters sleep with their black slaves and thus have children through them. Cornelis Brink’s mother Petronella, a former slave, was black. Philida’s father was a white man. Philida’s child Willempie has blue eyes.