Love as a Redemptive Solution for the Human Trauma in Sarah Kane’s Cleansed

Abstract

        The traumatic experience of violence is a predominant feature of contemporary culture and especially in the realm of literature. Yet, love represents the most suitable solution for the human trauma. The paper, therefore, examines how love of different sorts can conduce to the healing of many traumatic experiences in Sarah Kane’s Cleansed. The play is a representation of the human trauma caused mainly by the growing instability during the 1990s which had a profound impact on the whole Europe. It is about a number of characters who live in a university campus, and they are subject to different traumas; but love helps them overcome these traumas in the end.  Sarah Kane in her play Cleansed seems to be a more positive and hopeful person regardless of the fact that the first reading of the play may engender the impression that it expresses a sense of loss, trauma, and social disintegration, and this is somehow true.