Generational Trauma

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"Generational trauma" is a psychological phenomenon where older generations pass on their horrors, traumas, and angsts to the new blood. Sometimes the older groups aren't even aware of it, perhaps owing to the stigma of therapy and lack of awareness. Read more here: https://www.health.com/condition/ptsd/generational-trauma

In fiction, generational trauma is shown to play out over a relatively short time period. The exception may be in intergenerational novels, where you see hundreds of years pass at a time. Usually the person that passed on the trauma has to confront their demons, and the consequences of their actions.

You are more likely to see generational trauma in non-Western works, but it may crop up in Western stories as well, that talk about PTSD. Western works are more likely to shorten the timespan, so that the viewers get a sense of completion.

Examples of Generational Trauma include:

Comic Books

• The comic book Maus discusses this in Part Two, as Art goes to see a therapist after his father dies while pondering that his wife Françoise Mouly is pregnant with their first kid and that the Maus comic is not yet finished. He feels guilty that he had a good life in the American suburbs, with enough food to eat, while his parents endured concentration camps and his older brother Richieu died via cyanide pills. Yet his childhood and adulthood were filled with his father's embarrassing miserly ways and his mother's depression which eventually led to her death by suicide. Art even mentions to Françoise that he thought all parents screamed in their sleep. His therapist Pavel, also a Holocaust survivor, talks to Art through his mixed feelings about finishing the book, and what it means to survive. Nadja Spiegelman would later write her set of memoirs explaining that her parents were decent people, but her maternal grandfather took offense at Nadja discussing French collaborators.
• Sandman has a few instances.
  • Dream is a butthead, sometimes. He's arrogant, a stickler for the rules, and stubborn. He also has his own traumas that come with being the King of Dreams: having his sibling Desire charm away his paramour merely because Desire thought it was funny, witnessing another paramour throw herself over a cliff when their night of sex caused her village to be destroyed, and having an older sibling walk out on the others. These naturally aren't a good combo for being a father. Dream treats Orpheus cruelly when the latter breaks the rules of the universe to try and resurrect his wife, leaving Orpheus's severed immortal head on a beach where it washes up following the Maenads' attack. By the time Orpheus is recovered and exiled to a Greek island, .
  • Rose Walker, her mother and her brother Jed (offscreen as what he suffers onscreen is much worse) grapple with the fact that Unity Kincaid was raped while suffering sleeping sickness and conceived their mother, who was adopted out to an unknown family. Mrs. Walker takes it well after the initial shock, considering she meets her biological mother when Unity is a dying old lady and tends to her during her last few days. The rape in question made Rose a vortex, an Apocalypse Maiden that Dream has to kill to save the universe. While Unity saves her in the Dreaming, by taking Rose's place and becoming the Vortex as was originally intended, Rose becomes depressed and aloof for several years unable to comprehend that her grandmother gave her life for a granddaughter she knew for less than a year.

Film

• [[Encanto puts this on full display for most of the movie. Abuela Alma witnessed bandits murdering her husband who attempted to protect her and their triplets, along with a group of refugees. When the miracle happened-- an ever-burning candle caused the mountains to rise and dispel the bandits while creating a safe haven for the survivors, and giving magic to Abuela's children-- Abuela became convinced that the best way to respect the miracle was to make her children useful. Unknowingly, her demand for perfectionism and rigidity causes her to alienate her powerless granddaughter Mirabel who tearfully pinpoints at her Rage Breaking Point that she will never be good enough for Abuela. That's not even going into how she inadvertently turned her son Bruno into the town's pariah who opts to hide in la Casita walls to mend the cracks and protect Mirabel from one of his prophecies, has driven her other granddaughter Luisa to a near-breakdown with how Luisa feels she needs to literally carry the house's burdens on her back, and treats Isabela as the golden child who must never get her hands dirty despite an affinity for plants. It takes la Casita crumbling as Mirabel finally calls out Abuela for her toxicity for Abuela to acknowledge the trauma of seeing her husband die in front of her and reconcile with her granddaughter after a dazed Mirabel wanders from the rubble.
• Turning Red has this for the central conflict. Mei has spent her whole life pleasing her mother Ming but her mind and body start to rebel after Ming humiliates her in front of her crush Devon after outwardly accusing him of being a sexual predator. Ming in the meantime remains Obliviously Evil that she's emotionally abusing her only daughter while thinking she's helping out and shaming her for the crime of being a teenager...because Ming's own mother did the same to her. It's implied this emotional abuse and shaming runs several generations back. Her mother didn't even approve of Jin, Ming's Nice Guy of a husband, and is quick to berate Ming if Mei appears less than perfect. The climax features Ming's mother seeing the consequences of her abuse when Ming's panda talisman cracks and she becomes a kaiju-red panda, endangering an entire crowd at the 4*Town concert where Mei ran to reconcile with her friends and manhandling her daughter painfully.

Literature

• Like Water for Chocolate shows how Mama Elena's abuse passes onto her children and grandchildren. Her baggage is she wasn't allowed to be with the man she loved because he was a "Moor" and lower-class; she married a man who would financially provide for her, but died of shock when he heard rumors about the affair, and that daughter Gertudis may not be his. A single parent and stigmatized, Elena took out her rage on the only person that she could: her youngest daughter Tita, whom per tradition would take care of Elena for the latter's days rather than get married. She forbids Tita from marrying her love Pedro, persuading Pedro to marry her eldest daughter Rosaura instead, and proceeded to berate Tita for protesting this decision for years on end. While Rosaura agrees this is unfair, and she and Tita call truce later in life after Elena dies, she's shocked when Tita refuses to abide by the truce after learning that Rosaura will hold her daughter to the same tradition.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender]] practically runs on this trope. A hundred years ago, Avatar Roku's death provided a window of opportunity for the Fire Nation to launch global colonialization on the other kingdoms, under the guise of "improving" them. While the instigator Firelord Sozin had good intentions initially, he realized too late that wiping out all the Airbenders in search of Aang was not going to win him any brownie points or spiritual karma, and each generation became worse than the last with Azulon willing to murder his grandchildren to make a point, and Ozai showing no compunctions about scarring his fourteen-year-old son in front of an Agni Kai audience when said son refused to fight him. It's no wonder that Zuko is a Jerkass after suffering that, and his redemption only starts in season 3 when his imprisoned uncle gives him scrolls of Sozin's diaries, that show where his great-great-grandfather went wrong.
• Legend of Korra continues this with the new blood:
  • Avatar Aang was a good person, a cheerful guy, and a doting father, but Tenzin felt immense pressure from Aang since they were the last two Airbenders in existence. He can't forget that he was the only survivor of the Airbender clans, and found many skeletons where he expected to find friends. Kya and Bumi felt that they were ignored in favor of Tenzin, and both resented their little brother while showing they would protect him with their life.
  • Firelord Izumi and her son General Iroh bear the emotional scars of what their ancestors did. Iroh leads fleets to protect the innocent, while knowing the implications of declaring war. Izumi herself refuses to launch preemptive strikes against Kuvira in Season 4, pointing out it's decisions like that which led to the Fire Nation destroying entire cultures.