[7] SILENCE AND VIOLENCE: THE LANGUAGE OF TRAUMA IN PARO ANAND’S NO GUNS AT MY SON’S FUNERAL

How to Cite the Article: Rishi Kumar Yadav & Sunita Murmu (2026). Silence and Violence: The Language of Trauma in Paro Anand’s No Guns at My Son’s Funeral. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research & Reviews, 5(6),61-70. https://doi.org/10.56815/ijmrr.v5i6.2026.61-70

Abstract

The conflict in Kashmir has been a long-standing one due to several political, historical and geographical reasons that have led to myriad experiences of displacement, forced migration, militancy and violence in the Valley. Further, these experiences have generated a rich body of literary and cultural production that bears witness to its devastating human costs. It is within this tradition that Paro Anand’s young adult novel No Guns at My Son’s Funeral (2005) occupies a distinctive and critically underexplored position, narrating the seduction and destruction of adolescent identity in the crucible of militancy. This paper argues that Anand’s novel deploys silence and violence not merely as thematic concerns but demonstrates how conventional channels of communication collapse under the weight of sustained, unacknowledged trauma. Drawing on trauma theory, particularly the works of Cathy Caruth, Judith Herman and Dominick LaCapra, the paper examines how the novel’s central characters inhabit a world in which speech has been fatally compromised, truth is encrypted beneath social performance, and violence has become the primary language of political and emotional expression. The paper contends that No Guns at My Son’s Funeral is not only a novel about trauma but a traumatic text, one that makes its readers witnesses to a culture of silence and violence that consumes its young and most vulnerable members.