茱迪．皮考特 (Jodi Picoult) 小說 « The Storyteller»中的女主角(Sage Singer)身為第三代納粹大屠殺生還者經歷的複雜見證過程豐富了當代大屠殺小說系列關於生存者見證與創傷經驗的描述，其中把錯殺當作對見證的回應更是值得深思，本文因而將其經驗置放於見證與創傷的理論框架，並且針對女主角對於原諒加害者一事的糾結展開一系列對於原諒的叩問。創傷記憶的傳承讓第三代也成為間接的大屠殺見證者，錯殺間接強化了這個論點，而Sage Singer錯殺的這起事件為存在於復仇和原諒這個永久的對立關係開闢了新的道路，因為錯殺，Singer 第一次考慮原諒的可能性，也開始仔細重新思量整個錯殺事件的意義。從原本單純的旁觀傾聽者、第二見證人到變成整個見證過程的要角，這樣的轉變證明了見證過程的感染性是不容忽視的，事實上，聽者不是單純的被動者，聽者在說者講述的過程扮演如同心理治療師的地位，藉由傾聽來幫助說者走出自己內心找不到出口的創傷深淵，然而，聽者在陪伴說者重返創傷場域的同時，聽者也深陷了，以 Singer的例子來說，復仇是對這見證經驗的反饋，因此，探討聽者該如何適當地反饋也是本文試圖想討論的重點。
本文大略可分為三部分: 第一部分主要在於爬梳整理見證理論並探討見證的意義以及創傷本質的探討，這部份還是會回到大屠殺事件本身的創傷論述，第二部分著重文本分析見證的感染力如何導致錯殺事件的發生，因為錯殺事件意外地開啟了主角願意探討寬恕的向度，因此第三部分則是討論原諒的本質與意義。

Jodi Picoult’s novel The Storyteller has enriched the discourse of witnessing and that of trauma in the contemporary Holocaust novels because of Sage Singer’s peculiar experience as a third generation survivor, a listener, and a secondary witness. What makes Singer’s experience of witnessing special is that she eventually takes revenge of her family’s misfortune by killing a Nazi officer—the act of revenge turns out to be a miskilling. The event of killing the wrong man is particularly the climax because it manifests the over-response of the contagious power of witnessing.
I draw on theory of trauma and that of witnessing to examine how the process of witnessing influences a listener’s mind. I observe that there is a contagious power of witnessing/listening that has been understated and underestimated. I argue that the miskilling is exactly against this background of lacking awareness of the significance of the contagious power of witnessing. Critics in the past seldom focused on the traumatization of the listeners in the process of witnessing and listening but on the testifiers. In the thesis, I would like to emphasize on the listeners who play important roles in the whole process of witnessing. In fact, for a testifier, a second witness or a listener in the process of testimony is in a position comparable to that of the therapist in terms of the therapeutic value in a process of witnessing. The second witness exists to help the testifier understand the experience, just like the way a therapist does.
The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part of the thesis aims at building theoretical grounds of the theory of witnessing and that of trauma to further
analyze Singer’s case in the novel. The second part of the thesis examines how the contagious power of witnessing gives rise to the event of killing the wrong man. Because killing the wrong man opens up the dimension of forgiveness, the third part of the thesis will be discussing the possibility and meaning of forgiveness.

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