Troubled Teens: The Psychosocial Impact of Childhood Trauma on Young Adults in Leigh Bardugo Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom

Abstract

Fiction is the mirror to reality where real life issues are woven within fictitious worlds to offer solace and a sense of relativity to the reader. The inquiry of this research work is focused on the depiction of childhood trauma in the novels Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo. In her novels, she uses trauma as a main theme and device to construct her characters and portrays the aftermath trauma provokes on its victims in a fantastical setting. The purpose of this research is to analyze the psychosocial impact childhood trauma inflicts on young adults in literary works. This investigation is based upon exploring both the mental and social repercussions teenagers face from traumatic events experienced in childhood along with studying the factors that contributed to it in Bardugo’s fictional world. This extended essay also aims to study the healing journey by obscuring the elements that drive the traumatic individual through the path of recovery.