Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

North-American Culture Studies

Bc. Bára Houžvová

The Representation of Trauma and Healing in The Leftovers Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Ph.D.

2019

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Ph.D.for his kind guidance, patience, and advice that he has given me throughout the process of writing this thesis and beyond. And my utmost thanks go to my parents for their boundless encouragement, support, patience and love. This thesis would not have been written without them.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction ...... 5

2 Trauma Studies ...... 9

2.1 PTSD ...... 14

2.2 The Leftovers and 9/11 ...... 17

2.3 Healing...... 20

3 Mapleton ...... 23

3.1 The Guilty Remnant ...... 26

3.2 The Garveys ...... 31

3.3 Nora Durst ...... 47

3.4 Matt Jamison...... 51

3.5 Every End is the New Beginning ...... 52

4 Miracle ...... 56

4.1 Axis Mundi ...... 56

4.2 Meet the Neighbours ...... 58

4.3 Uninvited Guest ...... 60

4.4 New Hope ...... 70

4.5 Miracle in Miracle ...... 72

4.6 A Long Way to Go ...... 74

5 Australia ...... 75

5.1 Messiah ...... 75

5.2 Salvation ...... 79

5.3 Obsession ...... 80

5.4 Love is the Key ...... 82

6 Conclusion ...... 84

Works Cited ...... 88

Summary ...... 93

Resumé ...... 94

1 Introduction The greatest discovery of my generation is that

human beings can alter their lives by altering their

attitudes of mind.

William James, 1842-1910

This quote is written by William James, a very respectable American philosopher, which perfectly illustrates the atmosphere of this thesis. Our subconscious is one of the most fragile parts of our mind, and if it is damaged, it can have fatal consequences. In today's world, people are dealing with a lot of stress and worries, each of us has some. Great demands are placed on education, appearance, work and people who do not correspond to these contemporary standards and expectations are often marginalized and judged. It is important to keep your head cool and not to collapse after every failure or when expectations are not met. But the question remains what to do when our worries grow over our heads and become a disease that is hard to deal with. What if our struggles to create one huge trauma difficult to cope with? And if something like this happens, is there any possibility of recovery? Is there a possibility of healing our soul? Trauma shows itself in many forms. English professor Cathy Caruth describes trauma “as the response to an unexpected Or overwhelming violent event or events that are not fully grasped as they occur but return later in repeated flashbacks, nightmares, and other repetitive phenomena”(Caruth 91).

This thesis deals with TV series analysis with the examination of trauma as a broader issue, it means that this thesis observes the individual seasons of The

Leftovers and studies its episodes and searches the situations in where the trauma is depicted, and then comments on the findings. As every single episode is different, this work studies the process of healing and observes the individual characters, looks for

5 the kind of trauma the characters experience and processes it with the help of secondary sources such as Unclaimed Experience by Cathy Caruth, A Cognitive Model of

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by Anke Ehlers and Clark, DM. or Narrating Our

Healing : Perspectives on Working Through Trauma by Chris N. Van der Merwe and

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela.

This topic has not been researched before, in a sense of trauma and healing and it is very contemporary. I chose this topic as I have always been interested in this psychological topic, such as diverse traumatic situation. This thesis provides me the chance to find out new information about this issue and connect it to a television series related to this exact topic of — trauma and healing. In this series, we can find types of trauma such as loss of a wife, loss of children, divorce, suicide and more.

This thesis works with different kinds of sources to help with the understanding of the real meaning of this issue, but my thesis is still authentic and original. I find and highlight in individual episodes how they deal with their problems caused by trauma and give my own feedback containing my personal feeling based on my understanding of the psychological source and the use of other sources that help me and my understanding of the topic.

The Leftovers is an American TV series based on the novel written by Tom

Perrotta and it belongs to the science fiction, mystery, drama, supernatural subgenres.

The main plot of this series follows the destiny of the inhabitants of a small New York town called Mapleton and everything that happens three years after 2% of the human population disappears, and they have no idea what has happened or how. Each of the main characters is part of the disaster and each of them struggles with loss since that point in time. The fate of the characters is intermingled, their feeling of loss and how they deal with this traumatic event to resolve different unpleasant situations and how

6 they choose to deal with it.

Damon Lindelof´s (co-creator and show runner of the famous TV series Lost) and Tom Perrotta´s (the other co-creators are Mimi Leader, Peter Berg, Sarah Aubrey,

Mimi Leder, Tom Spezialy and Eugene Kelly) TV show The Leftovers aired on the

HBO (Home Box Office) television network from June 2014 to June 2017. This series has three seasons, the first two consist of ten episodes and the final third season contains only eight. The most successful was the first season (it was even praised by Stephen

King), the third and the second season however was met with a rather negative response.

Through the lens of the show, this thesis seeks to identify and analyse all of three seasons of this series and tries to pinpoint different types of trauma in individual characters and evaluates their efforts to heal them. The thesis deals with questions like what kind of situation caused them trauma, do they find salvation, and do they find peace. Does exist something that can help to heal themselves?

The thesis is divided into six chapters, of which the second chapter avers basic explanation of trauma and other chapters focuses on all of three seasons of The

Leftovers, with trauma analysis and the storyline of the most relevant characters and the circumstances of their life. Every main chapter is further compartmentalized into sub- chapters, each dealing with a specific issue or aspect of the respective character’s situation.

The second chapter, “Trauma” introduces the reader with the main types of trauma, it also deals with the Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, and explains the underlying causes of the disease, another part of this chapter is the 9/11 tragedy which is related to the series, and last but not least, this chapter explains the possibility of healing.

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The third chapter is called “Mapleton” and focuses on basic information about the plot of the series accompanied by the storylines of five main characters. The fourth chapter named “Miracle” observes the stories of the individual characters and their progress in healing, part of this chapter creates also attractions relevant to the topic and the last chapter named “Australia” shows the final phase of the healing process, the relationship of the main characters and what kind of procedures led to their ultimate recovery.

Every chapter will also feature some visual materials to better illustrate the journey of the character discussed in that chapter. They are screen-captures of specific moments in the show, made for the purposes of education and also the comparative image of National Geographic magazine which creates interesting knowledge in the story.

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2 Trauma Studies

For better understanding the topic of this thesis, it is necessary to mention the most important facts about trauma and also various types of healing. This chapter will help to understand the real, formal meaning of trauma as well as terms related to the trauma and the possibilities of getting through the trauma which is healing.

Thompson and Walsh see trauma as “horrific events that occur in a person’s life that have the effect of producing a psychological ‘wound’” (Beck et al. 220) and according to Chris Van der Merwe and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, “trauma has been described as the “undoing of the self”, and as the loss: loss of control, loss of one’s identity, loss of the ability to remember, and loss of language to describe the horrific events”(Van Der Merwe and Gobodo-Madikizela 1). In The Leftovers, this horrific event which caused trauma to many people is depicted in The Sudden Departure in which people lost their co-workers, friends and even the closest relatives. After this incident, individuals often believe that they have little control over life events, which seem unpredictable and often dangerous. As a reaction, the victims of traumatic events may become hyper-vigilant, avoidant, and isolated, as in Nora´s case after the disappearance of her husband and kids (qtd. in Beck et al. 220).

Trauma is divided into several categories according to what the person went through. It is an interpersonal trauma, health, and medical trauma or mass trauma and disaster, for purposes of this thesis; we will be most interested in interpersonal trauma and mass trauma and disaster (Leung 6). “The struggle with trauma is a struggle with memory. It is common for traumatised people to be confronted with painful traumatic memories long after the traumatic event occurred. Trauma is not remembered in the same way as normal events but is often relieved as flashbacks, as if it were recurring in the present, this is because, unlike normal events which are easily integrated into mental

9 life, traumatic events are not easily assimilated. The repetitive intrusion of traumatic memories into the lives of survivors render victims and survivors powerless, without any internal resources to control the intrusive traumatic memories” (VDM and PGM 2).

The flashback creates also a part of PTSD and provides a form of recall that survives at the cost of willed memory or of the very continuity of conscious thought.

While the traumatized people are called upon to see and to relive the insistent reality of the past, they recover a past that encounters consciousness only through the contradiction of active memories (Caruth 152).

The denial of the traumatic events, like in The Leftover´s series is one the worst things to do because victims rest stuck into their memory and flashbacks and it complicates the possibility of healing because of this so-called “unfinished business” of trauma which is primarily a cluster of the reflections of an inner breakdown of the self and of an inner emotional conflict. “The intrusive memories and the re-experiencing of trauma is the most distressing features of the aftermath of trauma. Victims and perpetrators of trauma feel helpless and at the mercy of the intrusive and fragmentary memories of trauma, unable to control these memories and completely victimised by them” (VDM and GM 3).

One of the best possible ways to deal with trauma is narrating. In The Leftovers series, characters often feel lonely, misunderstood, and they suffer from depression.

Why? Because they do not talk to each other properly, they keep their secrets and problems for themselves very often, they think they are strong enough to fight with their struggles all alone, but they do not realize that this distance, in fact, hurt them, as it can be seen for example in Kevin´s case who gradually begins to lose control over himself.

“We are the narrators of our life stories, and we also play the part of the main character in them—therefore our stories are “autobiographies”, unified by the actions of the main

10 character striving towards a future and determined by a past. We are narrators of our lives; furthermore, we are also readers of it. The procedure is the same as in the book; we turn the pages back and forth and read the individual life chapters (2). In the narrative identity of French philosopher, Jean Paul Gustave Ricoeur, we distinguish between two types of the depiction of identity which is idem and ipse. “Idem refers to an abstract, formal identity, ipse to a dynamic identity; idem refers to that which is always exactly the same; ipse, on the other hand, is “selfsameness”, constancy within a variety of circumstances—it is a “narrative identity” which creates cohesion within a life which would otherwise fall apart. In other words, he divides Same (idem) and Other

(ipse) (qtd. in VDM and GM 2).

“The creation of a narrative from the data of our lives does not mean that we can ever completely comprehend the meaning of our lives. We are still in the midst of our stories, striving towards a desired end. We do not know what will happen to us, we do not understand why everything that has happened to us; much darkness envelops us.

Even at the end of our lives, a full understanding will still elude us. So, narrating our lives does not mean to come to a full understanding of life, but rather to strive towards a meaningful existence and to live the best of possible lives” (3). Narrating one's life is important because it is about finding structure, coherence, and meaning in life. On the other hand, trauma is about the shattering of life's narrative structure and about a loss of meaning—the traumatised person has “lost the plot”. Typically, victims of trauma, when relating the experience, begin with the time before the trauma, they attempt to forget the unpleasant occur happened to them, they try to avoid memories, and they remain stuck into the past. “Overwhelming trauma is like an earthquake, wiping out the world as it was known; and the daunting challenge is to build a new narrative that connects the trauma with the life coming before and after it” (6).

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The American-born historian who is famous for his work in intellectual history and trauma studies Dominick LaCapra splits trauma into two types. The first one is called “historical trauma”, which refers to a single huge disaster, which can be personal

(for instance, a rape) or communal (flood) and the second one is “structural trauma, which refers to a pattern of continual and continuing traumas. “Structural trauma and historical trauma are harmful in different ways. Structural trauma is not only painful itself, but leaving the well-known framework of that situation may be—at least at first—even more painful; historical trauma, on the other hand, causes its pain by the shattering of a protective framework that had seemed so safe” (13). These two types can be interconnected in some way and in The Leftovers we can find both types of them.

When someone went through some traumatic event, it is inevitable that he suffers but more important thing is to find the way how to deal with his struggle. In The

Leftovers, individual figures still wonder why everything happens to them. They still ask questions like “Who is to blame for my suffering? Did God plan it? Does my trauma fit into a greater scheme of things? Rather than looking from the trauma “backward” and brooding over these unanswerable questions about the (human, heavenly or diabolical) causes of the suffering,”(14) because The Sudden Departure in The Leftovers truly reminds biblical rapture, at least in the beginning of the story. Later on, the characters gradually realize that some questions cannot be answered. People suffering from the trauma need time, they do not want to hear they must “pull themselves together” or “look on the bright side of things”. They need a period of wordless mourning, of painful meditation on what happened, before they can move forward. Any talk about a search for meaning in suffering would be offensive to a traumatised person who is emotionally not ready for it. And even when the search for meaning begins, the journey often moves one or two steps forward, and then one backward” (15).

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Kyo Maclear observes, all traumatic narrative and description of traumatic events constitute “limits of remembrance” because the horrors being recounted “conjure an excess that cannot be retold” (qtd. in VDM and GM 25). “Bearing witness”, as trauma scholars have termed the process of telling one’s story of trauma, is an important part of “working through” trauma. When people are overwhelmed by a traumatic experience, there is a silencing of the senses, a state of being frozen. The silencing is more than a lack of words; it is also a lack of understanding of what has happened to them. Trauma overwhelms the psyche; it contains no reference point in terms of one’s former experience” (27). Trauma is haunting us in everyday life and can leave profound consequences but when we come together to narrate our traumatic experiences, we invite others not only to listen to what we have to say but to journey with us as we “re- find” ourselves and re-find the language that has been lost. The journey of narrating, of being in dialogue concerning our experiences, is a very important one because we need an audience—a person, or people, who will listen with compassion, with a desire to understand what has happened to us. The listener may be the person who went through the trauma or someone who was present when the trauma happened, or who was not present but knows about the trauma (27). It is a long process and in The Leftovers we can find this narration in the final scene when Nora and Kevin meet with each other after many years and Nora finally decides to reveal her whole story to Kevin, it is the situation when she finally opens her heart, and she is truly honest about all of her struggles ("The Book of Nora" 00:58:17-01:06:32).

Susan Brison elaborates on the idea of narrative as a “remaking” of the self.

Trauma, she argues, robs the self of its sense of autonomy and leads to loss of control of oneself—what she terms the “undoing” of the self. The act of transforming trauma into the narrative, Brison informs that ability and willingness to listen empathetically

13 facilitates victims to gain more control over the traces left by the trauma (qtd. in VDM and GM 28). Cathy Caruth points out on this struggle of the inevitability of this

“outing” of trauma in her book Unclaimed Experience. “Trauma, she argues, is bound to return to haunt the survivor; it “imposes itself” repeatedly in the nightmares and repetitive actions of the survivor. Trauma is “always a story of a wound that cries out”

(Caruth 4). Moreover, she describes trauma as an overwhelming experience of sudden or catastrophic events in which the response to the event occurs in the often delayed, the uncontrolled repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena

(Caruth 11).

Traumatic memories are so huge that they cannot be easily turned into narratives, and it rests unassimilated in the psyche, these memories are very often attended by intense emotions, vivid images, nightmares and somatic symptoms such as sweating palms which is exactly the problem of Kevin Garvey, Jr. “When such integration has taken place, the story of the event can be told, the flashbacks and the somatic symptoms disappear, and the person regains control over the past. Integration can be achieved either by adapting the trauma to fit into the scheme or by adapting the scheme to contain the trauma or both” (VDM and GM 57).

Despite the fact that “trauma destroys the belief that we are in control of our lives and it leaves us shattered and powerless” (5), it exists certain methods which lead suffering people to heal themselves so there is always hope to get through this trouble,

“reconciliation cannot be condensed into a quick project, it needs consistent work, on a personal and on a public level” (“Preface”).

2.1 PTSD Trauma creates an inevitable part of the human experience and affects all the aspects of people´s life. Psychological trauma has been posited to support or contribute to a wide

14 range of psychiatric disorders and medical problems. Primarily it is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is characterised by symptoms of re-experiencing, avoidance, negative cognition/mood, and arousal (qtd in. Fragkaki et al. 2). This disease reflects “the direct imposition on the mind of the unavoidable reality of horrific events, the taking over of the mind, psychically and neurobiological, by an event that it cannot control. As such, PTSD seems to provide the most direct link between the psyche and external violence and to be the most destructive psychic disorder”, suggests Cathy

Caruth (Caruth 57-58). According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder manifested by severe and persistent stress reactions following exposure to a potentially traumatic event

(PTE), including re-experiencing of the event, avoidance of memories and reminders of the event and negative recognition and mood (Wade et al.). Dr. Anna Baranowsky describes PTSD as “an anxiety disorder that can occur following a traumatic event. A psychological trauma, as opposed to physical trauma or injury, occurs when you experience an emotionally disturbing or distressing event,” (Baranowsky 3). In the series, the huge traumatic event is represented by the so-called “Sudden Departure”.

The problems which are closely connected to PTSD are sleep disorders, congestion including memory outages or trauma reactions. Concomitantly with PTSD, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorders), agoraphobia, depersonalization, or various addictions may occur. There is an acute response to stress, it occurs with symptoms last less than 3 months and chronic PTSD which are the symptoms lasting longer than 3 months (Baranowsky and Lauer 5). Post- traumatic stress disorder may occur as a result of situations that threaten the victim or his or her close relatives (e.g. war, flood, fire, severe injury, car accident, cruelty, kidnapping, life-threatening disease) or changes in interpersonal relationships and social

15 roles (loss of employment, infidelity or divorce). In The Leftovers, all of the characters are partly affected by this disorder as they were witnesses to The Sudden Departure which I have already mentioned. Kevin Garvey, Jr. and Nora Durst are the people who are the most affected of all inhabitants from Mapleton city, NY.

Not all the people who went through the traumatic event must deal with PTSD but it is 20-40% of the victims. In 2000, the United States registered approximately 25% of people who suffered from this disturbance (qtd. in Leung, Eugenie Y., et al.). Post- traumatic stress disorder is often accompanied by re-experience of an event in thoughts or dreams. The patient often avoids a site or situation reminiscent of an accident. He does not recall any details or even the whole period, he has a problem with falling asleep and sleep as such, he is irritated, angry, and he has a problem with concentration

(Baranowsky and Lauer 3). “Trauma disconnects the person physiologically, emotionally, spiritually, cognitively, interpersonally, and socially. The National

Comorbidity Study found that 60.7% of men and 51.2% of the interviewed women reported they have experienced at least one major traumatic event in their lifetime” (qtd. in Wheeler).

American psychologist and educator Francine Shapiro extended the concept of trauma to Big T events and small t traumas (qtd. in Wheeler 132). Big T events are events such as war, physical abuse, car accidents, natural disasters, and other major life- threatening events, by contrast, small t traumas are, for example, humiliation, emotional neglect or indifference, and family issues. Even if the small t traumas do not rise to the level of Big T ones, yet may create huge problems and long-term impact, emotionally as well as physically. “Traumas, both big and small, can significantly compromise functioning and lead to psychiatric problems and disorders” (Wheeler 133). German psychologists, Anke Ehlers, and David M. Clark state that trauma memories of people

16 with PTSD do not have this level of organization and elaboration with inadequate integration into their context. People should not recall their trauma again and again because “there is also a high frequency of involuntary triggered intrusive memories involving re-experiencing aspects of the event in a very vivid and emotional way.” They suggest that these recurring memories could have a negative impact because, as they remind themselves of the tragedy, they feel as if they are experiencing it over and over again. Furthermore, the negative evaluation of trauma and/or its corollary determine whether persistent PTSD develops. Victims of trauma may over-generalize from the event and, as a consequence, perceive a range of normal activities as more dangerous than they really are, they may also overstate the probability of further catastrophic events in general and take the fact that “I attract disaster” (Ehlers and Clark).

PTSD is grave illness and in The Leftovers series, we can observe this disorder very often, for example, at the Kevin Garvey´s repeated attempts to commit a suicide, mainly in the second season when he gradually realizes he is totally out of control, he feels lonely and misunderstood, even though he and Nora do not live in Mapleton anymore which is a massive reminder of everything happened to them, but they move to

Jarden, Texas in where they come to find a better place to live and maybe hope as well.

I will talk about that more precisely later on.

2.2 The Leftovers and 9/11

The event of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was without a doubt one of the worst incidents in the history of The USA. It was a huge tragedy in which many families lost their closest relatives, colleagues or friends. A lot of documents and film were shot about this tragedy and a lot of people even believe that everything was just set up, and they still invent various types of conspiracy theories. But this thesis does not deal with the massacre of 9/11, yet it is closely related to it. In fact, these two tragedies have

17 several common factors, even though The Sudden Departure is fiction. Both, the terrorist attacks and The Sudden Departure caused mass trauma to many people and in both cases people gradually forgot or at least they put this tragedy somewhere in retreat, they had to move on, live their lives no matter what had happened, and they keep fighting and killing each other, maybe, in fact, we are The Leftovers who live in some

Departure. “But the memory of it is still fresh enough that Earth's population longs for safety and security, for the promise that such an event will never happen again. Some turn to religion. Some turn to science. Some turn to superstition. But everybody's looking for assurances, and that's exactly what a Lindelof´s show, steeped in ambiguity, refuses to offer” (VanDerWerff). That is why The Leftovers' series takes place three years after the event. Damon Lindelof, one of the executive producers in one of the interviews announces that this series is a lot about dealing with grief and loss, and he declares that despite that fact 9/11 was manifestly horrible and traumatic, people eventually got over it and moved on and this is the central theme and metaphor for the show and it creates also a part of what drives The Guilty Remnant cult. They present themselves as a living reminder of the tragedy (Hughes).This tragedy affected in a negative way many people and caused them various types of trauma, especially PTSD but there exists a possibility to reduce this post-traumatic stress disorder or even stop it.

Even though victims of trauma are psychologically vulnerable immediately after the abnormal experience, specialized assistants helped them by speaking with them and listening to them. This idea is developed by Prof. Chee-wing Wong who is a fellow of the Hong Kong Psychological Society (qtd. in Leung et al. 35). In spite of the arrival of over 9,000 grief and crisis counsellors in New York City after the collapse of the Twin

Towers, only a few people expressed interest in psychological help, (early intervention strategies such as crisis intervention or critical incident stress debriefing — CISD) and

18 even specialized founds were available for them. This situation shows that people are willing to recover from early post-traumatic symptoms themselves, even CISD has been titled as a potentially harmful therapy (DeLisi et al. 782). Interesting fact is that in the series, Nora Durst works in the institution that distributes survivor benefits, which has a parallel to 9/11. Although many people were not affected by the outbreak of PTSD, findings from the World Trade Center disaster indicate that “many people did have significant symptomatology afterward, such as insomnia, irritability, general anxiety, vigilance, and impaired concentration,”(qtd. in Kathleen Wheeler) and they had to face difficulties like aggression, self-hatred, dissociation, somatisation, depression, distrust, shame, relationship problems, and affect regulation (qtd. in Kathleen Wheeler).

Over the last decades, human beings had been threatened by a series of devastating catastrophes, such as the 2004 Southeast Asian mega-earthquake and its accompanying tsunami and the 9/11 terrorist attack. Catastrophes like these meet very often with huge impact, it touches not only victims and their relatives, but also people around the globe, moreover such disasters evoke age-old questions about the meaning of life. These questions are very often connected with faith. Believers ask questions like: “Does God really exist? If so, why did He allow this to happen? Why do the innocent have to suffer? Is God really in control of events? Why does God not control the forces of nature properly? Why does He not protect the innocent against the cruelties of the wicked? Is God maybe not almighty? Or worse, is God not benevolent?” (12). In

The Leftovers, characters deal with the same problem, they do not understand why, why would God do this to them, especially preacher Matt Jamison, Nora´s brother, who is very angry at God because he sacrificed all his life to the faith, and he does not simply understand why would God do not take him into heaven, why he (Matt) is not that chosen one. At the beginning of the first season, the characters really believe that The

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Sudden Departure is, in fact, some biblical rapture and that God chose only the best people and take them to some better place, but as the series continues, they are in doubt about believing The SD is the real biblical rapture, because missing people were chosen randomly. That is the fact Matt could not understand and accept. He is obedient and faithful Christian so why God would be wasting time with any bad guys?

Even though the traumatic events are incidents causing desperate stated, unpleasant feelings and even grave illnesses, we can find people who recover soon after the traumatic experience or even observe something beneficial in this. People often report positive changes after exposure to trauma (qtd. in Leung et al. 92). These post- trauma outcomes are often referred to as resilience and post-traumatic growth (89).

2.3 Healing

The healing of trauma often takes time, but victims can follow some steps to help them deal with it the best possible way and in the shortest possible time. Every person is different, so he or she should ensure various methods to fight with their struggles.

According to Dr. Baranowsky, there are three steps to healing trauma. Firstly, the victim has to find comfort, feel safe and be confident. The second step is about remembering our trauma as there is always a sense of loss and grief, the victims of trauma have feeling that the world is unfair but it is important to talk about trauma and be conscious of that. A narration of trauma is one of the best ways to fight with that.

And the third step is - come back to normal life, Dr. Baranowsky advises, “redefine yourself as a person who has experienced trauma in your history, and not as a trauma survivor. Your trauma no longer defines who you are. Instead, you have experienced trauma, learned from it and grown” (Baranowsky and Lauer 5).

Part of the struggle of healing from trauma is the struggle to find the appropriate language to narrate the trauma (26). We can observe this problem in The Leftovers, even

20 though characters try to talk with each other, they are not sure how to express themselves, they are shy, not trusting, and they drown in sadness rather than confide in each other. The process of telling can be alarming; traumatized people are frequently not conscious of their feelings since they have been detached in many cases, split off, from the reality of the traumatic experience, and we talk around the trauma because it is really scary. When they talk about it, they often say, “You cannot imagine”, and they break down crying. They cry on the grounds of tears which can take the place of words, the language of tears, the body language. Despite the fact that the tears are an expression, they are not in the language of words; it means that the fear of the unknown trauma remains. “Indeed, the process of healing trauma is directly linked to the process of finding language to narrate it. It is about telling the story so that it becomes part of one’s identity and part of one’s life narrative, so that it is told in the same way that we talk about ordinary events—so that one does not have to stop to say, “You cannot imagine”, so that one says, by implication, “You can actually imagine it, because it happened to me and this is how it happened” (VDM and GM 30).

The process of healing trauma brings together all parts of one’s self at deeper levels of inner knowing. Victims of trauma need to self-actualization and planning the future (Wheeler 140). It is needed to say that healing does not mean ending of all suffering and pain, but rather facing and work through trauma so that the tragic loss caused by trauma is balanced by a gain in meaning. As was mentioned above, the problem is tense between silence and disclosure.

Another healing therapy is so-called bibliotherapy in which writers can, vicariously, express what other trauma victims find impossible to tell. “Literary narratives can help a traumatised person to confront suppressed feelings. When victims find it too hard to confront their trauma directly and to talk openly about it, literature

21 can provide a way of facing it indirectly—partly acknowledging and partly disguising their trauma—and of talking indirectly about their trauma by discussing the literary narrative” (58).

The positive knowledge is that there is always hope for people suffer from a traumatic event. German psychologist Erik Homburger Erikson defines hope as “the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained, hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired”

(qtd. in Leung et al. 14). Nevertheless, the healing process is a complex, continuing process and in another chapter, we will precisely track the way of individual characters and their attempts to heal themselves.

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3 Mapleton The first season of the series takes place in Mapleton, New York. The story begins on

October 14th, the day of the great tragedy, later called The Sudden Departure. In the opening scene, we observe the typical situation of everyday life. A mother with a crying baby comes to the laundry service, she is calling, the baby doesn't stop crying, it seems that phone conversation is more important than her baby, she puts still crying baby to the car seat while she is still calling, she takes her seat, and she wants to go home but abruptly, the cry is silent and when she turns backward, the baby is gone. Suddenly, inconceivable panic and despair is everywhere, people in the parking lot shouting, calling the names of their relatives. Even though you are not physically there with them, the sense of hopelessness breathes after you through the TV screen and causes goose bumps. The phone line keeps ringing, people call the police and report the disappearance in bulk, and absolutely no one understands what happened. This situation resembles the opening scene of “Zero Dark Thirty” (which is the movie about the nearly decade-long international search for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the

September 11 attacks) when emergency workers call in the World Trade Center attacks, in another scene we can see two people fall from a building, one of several callbacks to the tragedy we faced in the real world.

Cut, three years later. The following scene, which opens the whole story, shows

Kevin Garvey, who is jogging, in the background we can hear radio announcements, announcing the number of vanished people from around the world. He meets a dog and when he calls him, a deafening blow sounds and the dog falls dead to the ground, Kevin faces a man with a gun, and he is completely shocked (“Pilot”-00:04:04) Gradually, the other key characters are introduced.

In the first season, the characters deal with grief, everyone feels confused

23 somewhat. People worry not only a tragedy, but mainly the fact that everything has changed and people do not want to admit this reality. The Leftovers is a series full of uncertainties and questions for which there is no answer or to which the viewer must come alone, it is a series of intertwined relationships, metaphors, symbolism and different views. “The Leftovers” is clearly a show with a surplus of signs and symbols.

Faithful viewers are left to wonder which, if any, they are meant to divine. And hope that there is a “greater purpose” (McDermon). When Mapleton’s inhabitants face the public, they assume masks of normalcy. They go to work, they smile, they go shopping, and they pay the bills. But in the privacy of the world, everything changes and loss and grief come to the surface, as well as the regret of the lost community.

In this series, animals, especially dogs and deer, appear abundantly, and they have their own, symbolic meaning. Kevin often sees the deer, the similarities between him and the myths are striking. In the flashback episode, Kevin is chasing a large male deer that is like him, stuck in Mapleton, the deer leads him in a bed with the nameless young woman where he commits adultery. Three years later, Kevin witnesses the deer being torn apart by a pack of wild dogs; does it mean that Kevin's soul is torn apart?

This scene reminds of the myth of Actaeon who was a Boeotian hero and hunter. He sees Diana (goddess of wild animals, vegetation, and childbirth) while she is bathing on

Mount Cithaeron, because of this, she changes him into a stag because the ego can be consumed by the unconscious forces that emerge through its thoughts and desires and then he is pursued and killed by his dogs because they cannot recognize him (Lukacher and Ned).

(On the left picture on the next page, there is the myth of Actaeon, on the right picture; there is the scene from series).

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This scene can be interpreted as a warning for Kevin, a deer depicting as himself who cannot resist his desires and cheats on his wife. And the deer also represents Kevin´s projected sense of masculinity which is weak and undeveloped. If we look to Kevin´s father, Kevin Garvey, Sr. (Scott Glenn), they are very similar; he has inherited this incomplete character from him. The deer also serves as a wake-up call for Kevin, and as a warning against what his future looks like because he fails to live up his role of the patriarch of his family and his community. In order to succeed, Kevin faces the forces of chaos and he needs to find his true purpose and becomes the kind of man the world needs “Pilot”- 01:08:50).

The atmosphere of the whole series perfectly complements the music of Max

Richter. The intro itself (images of disappearing people who go to heaven in an effort to catch people on the ground) in combination with music is directly breathtaking and evokes the feelings that blend through the whole seasons — sadness, despair, and fear.

If someone hopes to find the answers to questions like where everyone has gone, or what happened on October 14th, they rest disappointed. This story is not about the event itself; it is about the attempts of the characters deal with it and that is exactly the central theme of this thesis. This story is about faith and religion, mystery and grief and mainly about trauma and healing.

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3.1 The Guilty Remnant

The Guilty Remnant is a cult that is formed after The Sudden Departure. They believe that the world as we know ended on the day that 140 million people simultaneously disappeared and these days, they serve as living reminders. They have the daily plan that they must adhere to, their acquainting sign is white clothing, the prohibition of speaking (to communicate they use only pencil and paper), the monitoring of local inhabitants and, last but not least, cigarette smoking. “They are so convinced that they're going to die soon anyway that they smoke because they do not believe that cigarettes will kill them before they are taken” (Ortiz).

Cult as such can be interpreted in multiple ways. Psychologists, media figures, and other authors often designate groups as cults on the basis of the perceived social acceptability of them and their beliefs, their size, the outcomes associated with their beliefs, and the perceived influence of leaders on members (Woody 219). In The

Leftovers, members of The G.R. claim that they are not the cult that they are the organization. The difference between these two terms is radical. In the Oxford dictionary, the term “cult” contains two meanings. Firstly, a cult is depicted as “a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object” and a cult might be also a person or thing that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society, such as TV series (“cult”).

By contrast, the organization is seen as “an organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as a business or government department” (“organization”). This explanation shows that in the case of The G.R., we can speak about the cult more likely than about the organization. “A cult can be either a sharply bounded social group or a diffusely bounded social movement held together through a shared commitment to a charismatic leader. It upholds a transcendent ideology (often, but not always religious in

26 nature) and requires a high level of personal commitment from its members in words and deeds,” suggests Janja Lalich, who is American author and professor of sociology

(Lalich 5). Decision of the people to join the cult has the various motivation, e.g. drug addiction, psychological problems, depression, bad family relationship.

In the United States of America, more than a thousand various groups have been formed over the past several decades. One of the most controversial is Heaven´s Gate cult. This cult experienced its five minutes of fame in the 90s. The specialty of this group was their mass suicide in 1997, a great shock to many people. For some time, the newspapers and the TV were interested in them, but later they were almost forgotten.

Another famous and well-known cult is Hare Krishna movement; the official name of this cult is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). This cult is often connected with multiple scandals such as drug dealing, weapons stockpiling, the murders of some defectors, and the imprisonment of at least one regional leader (12).

One day, I met a man who was formerly a member of this cult. His motivation to join them was simple and it is to overcome his drug addiction. Although he is no longer a member of this cult, he will never forget how this faith helped him. The decision to become a member of the cult entails a certain amount of responsibility because a person must strictly follows the rules if he is not; he is punished or even excluded.

However, all groups are not taken so negative. Some people are looking for belonging, others for emotional or physical healing (Galanter 1). These people frequently meet with group cohesiveness, shared beliefs, and altered consciousness (14).

As reported by professors Robbins, Thomas, and Benjamin David Zablocki, “the question of why people obey the sometimes bizarrely insane commands of charismatic leaders, even unto death, is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of history and the social sciences” (Robbins and Zablocki 160). The most common reasons why people

27 join the cults are, for example, the meaning of life, spirituality, certainty, order, authority, dysfunctional family, or escape from the world or just curiosity. In The

Leftovers, as Cathryn van Kessel claims, “functionality manifests itself both economically and socially as companies and cults arise to meet new psychological demands (e.g., the business of creating body doubles of the Departed so that there can be a burial; The Guilty Remnant cult and the sense of purpose they provide for the disaffected; the expensive services of the guru of emotional healing, Holy Wayne)” (van

Kessel 61).

Why is The G.R.´s constantly wearing the white colour? White is a symbol of purity, innocence, signifying that they are ready for a fatal day when the world ends and believes it will not take long. In addition, white symbolizes everything invisible, unknown, mysterious, white reveals truth and sincerity and white is also a symbol of unity (Baltazar 103). In the past, it used to be a mourning colour; in nature, it symbolizes everything unique, original, and magical, a white swan, a white horse, a pearl, the ivory and so forth. People carrying the white colour of clothes are sincere, but also reserved, cool and may have trouble with forgiveness, they can suffer from a lack of emotion or excess indifference and that is what accurately describes the members of

The G.R., so the reason why they wear only white has definitely their justification. And why do they still smoke? Nobody knows the exact reason why they chose cigarettes as one of the typical signs. But the truth is cigarettes could be more than only a threat to everyone, it could be a metaphor of hasty, fast life, a cigarette just gently fast, shorter and shorter with each puff. It's a sort of life philosophy that people should stop for a moment, think about living today's busy life, spend time with their loved ones, because it (death) can happen any time, anything. This is exactly what this cult wants; they want people not to forget about what happened. When someone smokes, he does something

28 totally unnecessary, meaningless, impractical, and harmful. People are out to death.

They symbolically deploy life; overcome the fear of death and their own finality.

Smoking constantly reminds tensions between the mere length and the preservation of life and its sense and transcendence. It reminds us of the grandeur that may be incompatible with life. Indeed, as one of their statement indicates that they don´t smoke for enjoyment, they smoke to proclaim their faith.

The leader of this cult is Patti Lavin (Ann Dowd), who later becomes Kevin's nightmare. Patti creates a part of Kevin's life as soon as she brings in his lonely and estranged wife Laurie. There is always a constant tension between the two. We observe it in many episodes and situations where the two meet together. An important member of The G.R. is also Kevin's wife, Laurie, and also Meghan Abbot (Liv Tyler) who joins them later. Meg is not happy with his boyfriend anymore. The day before The Sudden

Departure, she loses her mother and Meg feels cheated because the death of her mother is overshadowed by the tragedy. Meg feels completely suffocated and trapped. She just wants to escape. Meg wants to do anything to feel something different from what she's feeling. It is like going for a respite from strife. She goes to The Guilty Remnant to get away from her present scenario — in her head for a few days — to see what it feels like.

During Meg initiation to The G.R., she must come to understand the symbolism of swinging an axe in a tree; it breaks the link between God and man. (“Penguin One, Us

Zero”-00:52:35). This scene reminds Axis Mundi, which is an idea represented universally across mythology and religion, it is the expression of earth and heaven which connects the cosmic axis or the world pillar or the world tree. Visually and artistically it is represented in many ways, but it is always expressed as a movement toward the centre (e.g. the cross in Christianity) (Latshaw 1998). The G.R. attempts to break down the connection that people have with divinity and to the higher states of

29 consciousness; they are bent over the destruction of the family, the community and finally the destruction of civilization.

When a citywide event, calls Heroes Day, takes place, Kevin Garvey worries about it, feeling like this occasion will bring trouble (“Pilot”-00:17:33). It is an event holds for the bereaved to remember their vanished, to cry and then to just go on, nobody wants to go back to what happened three years ago, they want to start living again, want to feel better, but The G.R. does not like this idea of a happy life at all. They do not agree with the notion that some “heroes” have disappeared, or that it may have been a biblical ecstasy, when junkies, prostitutes, murderers, etc., disappeared alongside good people. The G.R. members are ubiquitous; they watch people, chase them in the evening. The G.R.´s have sessions where they analyse in detail the individual members of the city and arrange inhabitants whom they could drag into their organization. They believe that a judgment day will come, and everybody will die anyway, so “STOP

WASTING YOUR BREATH” slogan actually seems like good advice. The act of smoking is a testament to their faith that they are not around long enough to suffer the consequences. And if the world ends, why should they care if smoking is bad for them?

The following scene reminds a horror movie. The G.R. members suddenly appear from somewhere, holding a slogan in their hands (by the way this slogan is a bit contradictory because they themselves waste their breath when they smoke), they disrupt Heroes Day and start a battle with the inhabitants (“Pilot“-00:52:00). Later, Kevin asks the leader of the group, Patti Levin, to not participate another city event, in which people will be opening a new library, and he points out that this time he will not protect them, explains to her that people want to have fun, want to drink and want to spend time with their families, she shows him with a cool expression on her face a paper in which“there is no family” sign is written. Kevin doesn't understand what she thinks by this statement, and

30

Patti throws on him with a scornful smile a photo of his wife (who is now part of The

G.R. as well) right in front of his face. Their motto is also: Won't them regret. It is clear enough those residents of the town; they do not understand why they (The G.R.) do what they do. People are upset that The G.R. occupy their city and that they do not follow the rules. Reverend Matt Jamison later comes up with a very interesting statement that killing them is unnecessary because, in fact, they are already dead.

3.2 The Garveys

Firstly, there is Kevin Garvey, who is the protagonist of the whole story. From the very beginning, it is clear that something is wrong with him. He is constantly sweating, not smiling, he is often angry, drinks alcohol, and he is pessimistic and inattentive. He also suffers from sleep disorders. There are five types of sleep disorders. The most famous and most common is insomnia, others are sleepwalking and night terrors nightmares, and enuresis. The main character, Kevin Garvey, suffers from three of them - sleepwalking, night terrors and nightmares. Sleepwalking and night terrors have a lot in common. Both these illnesses usually begin in late childhood or early adolescence and are caused, among other things, by stress, which may indicate that Kevin Garvey suffers from them since he was a child, and he was troubled by his father who overlooked him.

After awakening from sleepwalking, the victims usually do not remember the events that occurred during the process (Kales et al. 585). Nightmares, most known as “bad dreams,” are a current problem for approximately 5% of the general population and a past problem for another 5%, the problem with nightmares surprisingly also begins early in life, often before age 10. Nightmares are most often associated with fears of attack, falling, or death, and in many patients, the nightly themes recur. “These characteristics of nightmares easily differentiate them from the more dramatic night terrors, which occur during slow-wave sleep early in the night and generally are not

31 well remembered, if at all. People suffer from nightmares often reported having other sleep disorders such as insomnia, perhaps due to the awakenings associated with nightmares or the fear of falling asleep because of nightmares” (586).

On the one hand, it's not surprising, his stepson Tommy leaves the school and joins a

Holy Wayne cult, his daughter does not listen to him, she almost does not talk to him, and his wife joins The G.R., so he stays almost alone. On the other hand, he should be here at least for his teenage daughter. But Kevin´s situation is more serious than it might seem to be. Moreover, Kevin is troubled by a mysterious man Dean, whom he sees both during the day and at night in his recurring nightmares. As chief police, he should know the identity of everyone in the city. He knows the majority of the inhabitants by name, but he has never seen this man before, he does not know when and how Dean appeared in Mapleton. It is quite possible that he is Kevin´s so-called “shadow”.

The shadow is a concept found in analytical psychology, but sometimes can be observed in fiction and is a big source of dramatic tension and character growth. In storytelling a character shadow is typically a projected version of part of himself, this is portrayed dramatically either a split personality or maybe a character too. The shadow can be a villain, an ally, or perhaps both in one, a great example of the shadow is, e.g.,

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Berry-Hillman 222).Every person has his own shadow self, it is a natural indicator of humanity, no one is perfect, but the truth is that a lot of people reject this negative side of their personality, refuse to admit any bad side of themselves.

“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge,” claims respectable Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustave Jung (qtd. in Othon).The

32 shadow may be negative thoughts, a feeling of anger, our behaviour when we are drunk, aggressive impulses, immoral urges, fears, irrational wishes and so forth. The problem occurs when the person searches a bad side in other people, but he is not able to admit that he has also a dark side. Jung called this problematic as “projection”. “Although our conscious minds are avoiding our own flaws, they still want to deal with them on a deeper level, so we magnify those flaws in others. First, we reject, then we project”(

Othon). Jung also suggests that “everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected” (qtd. in Othon). Kevin´s shadow is shared by several characters. The first is Dean, who kills the wild dogs roaming around town and in dreams; Dean has the bodies of the culprit pilled in the back of his truck.

Kevin despises Dean but somehow, he succeeds form a friendly, collaborative friendship with him when he is sleepwalking. Kevin becomes unconscious of himself.

In the climactic episode of the season, Kevin confronts his shadow after he wakes up and finds that he kidnapped and abused Patti Levin, this is Kevin´s first realization and admission that he loses control of himself and that some psychotic force guides him.

Kevin begins to be aware that something is wrong with him, and even the mayor of town forces him to seek professional help, but he feels that the psychologist is rather kidding him, he doesn't believe him, and he doesn't listen to him properly, e.g., he forgets basic details, like the name of his patient’s wife. People stop to believe him and don't understand why he needs to shoot local dogs during the night.

MAYOR. Kevin, I ‘am trying to help you.

KEVIN. By forcing me to get cleared by some dipshit because I had a rough

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night?

MAYOR. Rough night? You are aware that people like dogs.

KEVIN. I like dogs.

MAYOR. Then stop fucking shooting them because that´s something crazy

people do (“Penguin One, Us Zero-00:24:00).

Kevin pretends that everything is all right, but deep inside of him, he realizes that nothing is fine anymore. That's why he sets out for advice to his father, who is in a psychiatric hospital. Kevin takes over his father´s job and lives in his house. His father is a model for him, and Kevin follows his steps since his childhood, by being a policeman, establishing a family and even becoming psychotic. He confides to him.

Kevin is afraid he will end up just like his father. But Kevin, Sr. doesn't admit he is sick.

It is evident that his father sees someone, hears voices; everyone believes that he is suffering from schizophrenia or some similar disease. Firstly, Kevin does not believe him either, but everything gradually begins to fit together when he starts to have similar problems like father. Later in the story, Kevin´s father brings him the May 1972 issue of

National Geographic magazine with a “deeper message” in it.

An interesting moment in this episode is the lost and the subsequent restoration of his breakfast, bagel. When he bakes it, the bagels suddenly evaporate, this weird situation does not fit into his head, and so at the end of the second episode, he distributes the whole machine and decides to find missing bagels. It is likely some hope that those people who disappeared did not disappear for God, that they are still somewhere, and there is a possibility that they would appear again.

Kevin outwardly acts like a big tough man, stylish, purely dressed, but deep inside, he feels different, it is only a kind of mask, he does not want to feel vulnerable outwards, he does not want his worries to be seen, but still, everything is written in his

34 eyes. Depression is even deeper when Laurie brings a divorce request for Christmas without a word to say (obviously, The G.R. members don't speak.). This situation is very decisive for him, and he does not even want to admit that they two would be divorced, despite this incident Kevin still believes that Laurie comes back to him; he keeps also wearing the wedding ring on his hand (“Gladys”-00:20:56).

Later he meets with Nora Durst. For the first time, they meet at the city's ball, where they speak for a while, but soon their journeys reconnect (they have already seen each other on Heroes Day, where Nora has a speech, but they haven't been communicating there yet). Although Kevin is very withdrawn, he reveals his secret to

Nora. She feels bad because of her husband cheating on her; Kevin says without thinking that he was cheating on his wife too. Nora asks him why, and he is not sure if there is any right answer, Nora calms him up she just heard the right one. Acquaintance with Nora is a new boost for him, a glimpse of hope, something new, and for the first time, he is smiling sincerely (“B.J. and The A.C.”-00:39:18-00:41:15).

Kevin is very busy in his work, because he always finds something to solve, he spends more and more time at work, he doesn´t want to be home alone, he is afraid, what comes at night, he also fears that he is not a good father for his daughter, moreover, it bothers him that Tommy doesn't answer the phone, and he has no information about him, Kevin has a strong feeling of failure. By staying at work he disengages his thoughts, he does not deal with himself there, but he solves problems of other people and that is exactly what suits him, he begins to lose himself. He misses

Laurie, and he is conscious about it, for example, when he does not have more washed white working shirts anymore, he wants to pick them up at the dry cleaners, but the salesman refuses to give them out without a ticket. Kevin angrily leaves when she hears

Nora, who advises him to doesn´t, give up; she comes to the laundry service to pick up

35 her clothes too. She tells him to be strong that seller is not fair, and he (seller) often sells clothes on the black market. The way she says the words and how she stares at him might have a hidden meaning for something like, “Don't worry, I'm all alone too, I know your wife has gone away and you have been through hard times, so hold on” (“Gladys”-

00:25.00).Kevin still thinks about Laurie as his wife, but Meg goes to get him out of this error very quickly, and she just tells him the unpleasant truth in the eye, and that Laurie is not his wife anymore. Maybe when he hears it aloud, he begins to finally realize that his marriage is over and that he should try to move on. He decides to hear Nora's advice and not to give up, he gets drunk and comes back for his shirts, he almost beats the salesman, but he finally gets his shirts back. When his shirts hang back in his wardrobe, he finally decides to tell his daughter the cruel truth that the relationship between him and his mother is over. The washed, clean shirts probably evoke the feeling that he no longer needs a woman to take care of him, that he can take care of himself. He simply decided not to give up as Nora counselled him. This scene follows a surge of emotion,

Kevin, in a hysterical cry, reconciles the truth that his woman does not return to him anymore (“Gladys”-00:50:30). Tears instead of words, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, are part of the successful healing process.

When Kevin begins to see Nora, he seems to feel better. But the reality is different. On the contrary, his nightmares grow, and he starts sleepwalking. He begins to lose his mind, and he is no longer conscious of the difference between fiction and the real world. One of the world foremost analytical psychologist Carl Jung analysed dreams and their connection with mythology and religion. Jung discovered that there are deep primal patterns that occur in the psyche as a result of evolution, he called these patterns archetypes which evolved along with the rest of the human brain, these archetypes are found universally in every person and every culture, since these models

36 have continually emerged in our stories of myths and dreams, we have an opportunity of gaining a deeper understanding of their psychological significance (“Carl Jung — What are the Archetypes?”).

Kevin takes medication, but his condition is getting worse anyway. At the moment, he reunites with his father, who just escaped from a psychiatric hospital (to give him a National Geographic magazine), he advises him to get rid of the pills, and he warns him that these drugs make him a mess in his head. As I mentioned, Kevin always subconsciously obeys him and takes him as an authority, so he throws away all the pills and flushes them into the toilet and sink. The father is the only person who really knows what is going on with Kevin. By contrast, Nora is the only person that can Kevin believe, so she confides in her, but she never asks for anything more, for some details, she does not take any of his problems seriously (she has more than enough of her problems), so their conversations often tend to sink into oblivion.

Everything is getting even worse with the unconscious kidnapping of Patti

Levin, whom he and Dean kidnap while Kevin is sleepwalking. When he wakes up, he is shocked and does not remember anything. What breaks him the most is when he learns that the kidnapping was on his initiative, he goes to the bar in his sleep, and then he and Dean kidnap her and drive to Cairo in New York. Cairo is the title of season one episode eight and is also a subject of National Geographic magazine detailing the plight of the Egyptian capital city of the same name, earlier his father explains him that it is a very important magazine for him, that everything is written there and that he will find all answers there, but Kevin doesn´t pay much attention to it, he does not believe his father. Now it just makes sense to him. Maybe his father does not lie at all; maybe there is a possibility that he knows the future. (Below, there is a picture of National

Geographic magazine of May 1972).

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The release includes, among other things a cave painting of two deer in it. The same painting can be found in the cabin where Patti is held captive.

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And finally, he walks past the scene that is recreated based on an image finds in the magazine from a story highlighting the hundred year anniversary of Yellowstone

National Park.

However, Kevin worries the fact that Patti is sitting beaten and tied up somewhere in a wooden cottage in the middle of Cairo´s forest. He does not understand why he does this; he is the good guy, the one who helps everyone around, the one who deals with similar crimes. Now, it is very evident that Kevin has an alter-ego, a good and evil side.

The one, who cares about the family, who is loving and kind, and the evil Kevin, who shoots dogs during the night, drinks alcohol, attacks people and the one that beat and kidnapped Patti, that is what Dean confirms when he wants to kill Patti and desires the other Kevin comes back (“Cairo”-00:28:55). Even though Kevin is completely out of mind, he still finds enough power to call. Whom is he calling? Again, the only person he trusts, Nora.

KEVIN: I did something stupid. I think I fucked up. I don´t know what´s

happening to me. So can you call me when you get the message? And

just I…I need you. (“Cairo”-00:31:15)

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He is totally desperate, he hits the tree and crying, but still, he remembers Nora in all this chaos. Patti Levin´s goal in this climactic confrontation is simple – she wants to

Kevin understands her, she wants him to get knowledge they were both left behind, she wants him to recognize his flaws and his sins, all that concerns that he is hiding away from his ego and to make her point, she cuts her own throat and kills herself, only to return as Kevin´s spirit guide. Kevin has no idea yet what is going to happen to him and after Patti's death, the real hell comes. The ninth episode is a retrospective, it shows how the name of the episode itself, “The Garveys at their best”, but also the other inhabitants of Mapleton at the time just before the SD, and above all shows the fact that people are not happy even before the tragedy. Kevin notices a crack in the wall of his house when he comes home from his run, he looks at the crack for a while and then the image equates so that the crack is not visible. This could symbolize that the family is really broke up even before the tragedy, but they try to conceal it, and they act like everything is alright. The house slowly starts to crack and fall apart, so does their family. (“The

Prodigal Son Returns”-00:05:00).Although he has a beautiful and clever wife, two diligent children and everyone in town loves him, Kevin is not happy; his daily run could have a hidden subtext that he just runs away from his family life. He fakes smile, leads an insincere speech at the celebration, which the whole city organize for his father on the occasion of the “Man of the Year”, in which he seems to be incredibly happy, and he ends his speech by proposing a toast to the family. Kevin is not satisfied even before the tragedy, he does not respect his family, but he is well aware of this:

KEVIN, SR. That was a beautiful speech. I almost believed you meant it.

KEVIN, JR. I think something fuckin´wrong with me.

KEVIN, SR. I think you´re right.

KEVIN, JR. Why isn´t it enough?

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KEVIN, SR. Because every man rebels against idea that this is fuckin´it. Fights

windmills, save fuckin´ damsels, all in search of greater purpose.

You have no greater purpose.. Because it is enough. So cut this shit

ok? (“The Prodigal Son Returns“-00:31:35-00:32:42)

His father is telling him exactly the opposite thing of what he convinces him when he hands him National Geographic in episode seven. Three years later Kevin responses

“So now I have a purpose?”

The deer weaves through the whole episode, as I mentioned before and has its symbolic significance here. Kevin tries to save the deer because Mapleton´s residents want to kill him, they chase him, but the deer finally dies anyway under the wheels of a woman's car, the same woman with whom later Kevin cheats his wife and this woman finally disappears right under Kevin´s hands.

Another member of The Garveys is Jill Garvey (Margaret Qualley), the poster child for rebellious teenage girls. “She falls increasingly under the influence of her friend Aimee (Emily Meade), a live-for-today party girl. Jill tries to do the opposite of the wishes of her over-serious father, Police Chief Kevin Garvey, Jr. But the backstory from the flashback portrays her as the epitome of a good girl. Three years ago, she is a serious student and cheerful daughter who is closer to her affable brother, Tommy”

(Nagelberg 2014). Nowadays, Jill Garvey is an example of a typical high school teenager, who is stubborn, hardly smiling, who has problems at school (she often skips the school, she does not represent the portrait of a good student anymore), she stays with his father, and after when her mother leaves them, she feels completely alone, she drinks alcohol, smokes and she is also vulgar. In short, she claims to be absolutely unmarked by The SD (although she is an obvious witness when she and her brother are invited to participate in an experiment, join hands with a group of

41 children to form an electrical circuit that lights and can all see clearly, directly people disappear in front of her eyes, and the young person will be surely affected by this.), but there is the Evaporators poster hanging on the wall in her room. She gives the impression of a hard, cool girl, but inside she hides a very delicate and sensitive heart.

Jill is upset that mother left her when she needs her the most, because every teenage girl needs a mother's advice, a hug, help, and she is also upset because their family broke up. The father is still at work, her brother left somewhere. Her friend Aimee, who moves to their house, is more popular than her, and she also flirts with her father, moreover, there is even the possibility that she slept with him. Because it is not sure how Kevin was injured and whether the aid from flirtatious Aimee involved only

Neosporin or other, less innocent forms of therapy (Grynbaum).

Although it is not precisely mentioned in the series, everything suggests that she suffers from untreated PTSD. Jill suffers from low self-confidence; she is in love with a boy named Nick, but he doesn't care about her, he is more attracted to Aimee. The boy who wants her is one of the Carver's twins, Charlie (Scott Frost), but Jill does not take any interest in him. Jill tries to figure out the appropriate way to respond to what's going on in the world and how to deal with her feelings. “The youth in particular — with their party games of self-harm, casual (and often random) sex partners and excessive drug use — paint a picture of a generation unrestrained by traditional boundaries of right and wrong” (McLean).

At Christmas time, Baby Jesus disappears from Christmas crib, and everyone talks about it, thinking it is some special sign from God. But Jill knows where the truth is because she stole him. She just wants to draw father´s attention because she knows that similar situations are in charge of the local police, where his father works. She has a feeling that he solves everything around, but he doesn't care about her a lot:

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AIMEE. Hey, speaking of Jesus, big deal at school, Mr. Garvey. Everybody’s

talking about it.

KEVIN. What?

AIMEE. The baby, how it just vanished from the manger.

KEVIN. It didn’t vanish. It got stolen.

AIMEE. So does that mean it’s the police’s responsibility to get it back?

KEVIN. Well, Aimee, as the Chief of Police, I would say that that might be a

misuse of our resources.

AIMEE. Hmm.

KEVIN. They’re just going to replace it.

JILL. That’s cheating.

KEVIN. Excuse me?

JILL. You can’t just get a new one. It’s sacred.

KEVIN. Jill, did you steal the baby Jesus?

JILL. That’s sick.

KEVIN. It is sick. OK, I have an actual job to go to, so I just want to be clear

that I’m not going to be doing anything about whatever this is.

JILL. Cool. Don’t. (“B.J. and the A.C.” 00:09:57-00:10:55)

Her behaviour is gradually getting out of control, she is still annoying, she almost doesn't talk, she is brash, she breaks into Nora's home, and she smokes marijuana. When

Aimee leaves their house after an argument, she feels alone as never before, and she decides to join The G.R. cult as her mother did.

Tommy Garvey (Chris Zylka) is Laurie's son from her previous marriage, but

Kevin adopted him so he calls him a father. After the event, he loses his personality, feels like a stranger, reflects on life and its meaning, struggles with inner emptiness, and

43 it can be interpreted by the book he reads, it is The stranger by Albert Camus(“Pilot”-

00:25:00). The strange story takes place in Algeria. It begins with the death of

Meursault's mother. However, he does not show any emotions at her funeral and the society condemns him. Later, he meets Mary but he is not able to display his feelings for her. Then he shoots a man on the beach where he and his friend met. He is condemned for this act. He is well aware of what he has done, but for him, this is not a reason to cry or feel bad. Meursault is a very lonely man. The name of this piece could have two explanations. One of them is he feels like a stranger because he is French living in a different country alone. Another explanation is that the main character becomes a stranger in society because of his emotionless behaviour, same as Tommy

Garvey has.

Tom leaves home, he quits school and joins Wayne Gilchrest aka Holy Wayne cult (Paterson Joseph), who is convinced that he can take people's pain away. Holy

Wayne lost his son on October 14th, and later he made himself a helper, telling people that his embrace was relieving pain, healing, but nobody doesn´t know if he is a healer, or if he is just some sexual loud guy who is interested in young Asians. Later, even the police are involved in the case. Wayne probably chose Tommy to help him because he is one of the few who does not want to take the pain away from him. Tommy helps him bring Asian girls to his house and takes care of them. Wayne later entrusts a girl named

Christine (Annie Q.) to him, Tommy obviously feels more than friendship, but he does not show anything, he hides his feeling (like Mersault) and he obeys the commands of his “chief”. This girl later becomes pregnant with Wayne, and she and Tommy are convinced that she is the chosen one who will have the special baby that will change the world. Wayne warns Tom to take proper care of her:

HW: This girl is everything, yes?

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TOMMY: Yes. (“Penguin One, Us Zero-00:41:52)

However, she does not know that she is not alone in this situation and that there are more pregnant girls, so she gives up the baby soon after gives birth. At the end of this season, Tommy brings the child to his father's door, and he runs away. Tom probably joins Wayne because he misses family and desperately wants to belong somewhere (so did his sister Jill who joins the group of naughty teenagers).

Laurie Garvey (Amy Brenneman) leaves the family and joins The Guilty

Remnant cult. Before the tragedy, she works as a psychologist. Soon Laurie gives her husband a divorce request for Christmas, and then he gets a cigarette lighter from her daughter with a heart-catching message, but he throws it without thinking in the canal because she wants to show his scholar Meg that she is really serious about The G.R. and that for her, there is really no family. From her side it is only the pretence, it is not easy for her. Later, when she is alone, she tries to pull the lighter out of the canal, and it is obvious that she is not fairly as a perfect member as she seems to be. At the moment,

Gladys, the member of The G.R. is found dead (Marceline Hugot), Laurie collapses.

Over time, she increasingly wonders if she made the right decision when she gave up the family. When she sees another happy family, we can read in her eyes joy and regret.

The joy - because some family is happy together, the regret - because her family has fallen apart, and moreover, it is her fault (“Gladys”-00:17:14).After Laurie's collapse and after the murder of Gladys, her leader Patti Lavin takes her to the motel, then gives her a new outfit, and later, they meet in a cafe where she wants her to do what she wants for all day long:

PATTI. How long has it been since you´ve spoken Laurie? About 7 months?

LAURIE. She shows on the fingers that it's been 8 months.

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PATTI. Eight. Right. Well, Laurie, you are overdue for a day off.

LAURIE. She wants to write something.

PATTI. No, no, you can talk. Just for today, say anything you want to. Hey, I ‘am

doing it, too, right? (“Gladys” – 00:22:31-00:22:53)

But Laurie does not want to use this offer. Why should she? What would be the reason for giving everything up then? After all, the Christian has no day off from his faith either. He would not kill a man, and another day he would not act like nothing had happened just because he had a day off, faith has no days off. Patti feels there is something wrong with Laurie, that's why she wants her to tell everything, and she tries to explain her why it's good to stay in the cult. Patti Levin is Laurie's ex-patient who had problems with her unfaithful husband who has a very strange appetite, and although

Patti proudly proclaims that there is no family, she is very well aware of her husband

Neal. In the flashback episode, Patti is at the therapy because she has problems with her husband. But today she is really weird at the therapy, she says she feels something terrible is going to happen, something what would everything change, and that she has so strong feeling of that, and this feeling goes through her whole body like the end of the world would come. Laurie argues that her husband is behind this feeling (her husband, who threw her out of the apartment and Laurie encourages her that she should take all her worries and put them in the package and put it in front of his house). Patti insists, however, that this time this is not about her husband and turns to Laurie, saying that she has a feeling something is wrong inside of her. (At that time, Laurie is pregnant, but she is not enthused by this fact because she is not happy with her husband anymore.

My personal guess is she was considering an abortion, but the moment the doctor is doing her ultrasound, and they are watching it together, the tragedy happens and the fetus disappears) (“The Garveys at Their Best”-00:12:08-00:14:45).

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Finally, when she sees his daughter Jill atThe G.R.´s door, she does not know what to do. But soon, The G.R.´s house burns down during a fire; Laurie finally leaves the cult and meets again with her “lost” son Tommy. Jill, who almost dies at the fire, finally returns to her father.

3.3 Nora Durst

Nora Durst (Carrie Coon) is a woman who experiences the greatest loss from the whole town because she lost her family, the husband Duck and the children, Jeremy and Erin.

Her job is to provide the so-called Departure Benefit to the bereaved, she asks questions, and she decides if they are entitled to benefit. It seems like an unpleasant job for her, but at least this work helps her to realize that she is not in this difficulty alone.

Nora is still unable to move on, she still returns to the day of the tragedy. She cannot accept the fact that her family will not return, that she is the only one who has not disappeared, even though she was in the same room with them all the time, she is constantly looking for some connection and wandering in a vicious circle of pain and suffering self-denial. Nora is locked in her grief, and she does a series of rituals to keep remembering her kids. She still owns a family car; she has children´s CD in the car, as well as their candy and a family sticker on the back of the car, something like a baby on board sticker. She still lives in their family house; she has their photos everywhere, everything rests the same as if they really should come back one day. “Hello, you reached the Durst residence, please leave a message” this message still sounds from the answering machine. When Nora learns from Matt that her husband had a mistress, a kindergarten teacher, she is shocked, she does not expect that, but on the other hand, she needs this punch in her face to finally move on. The fact that she did not lose a loving but an unfaithful man is like a blow to the clear sky. Later, she gets to know Kevin and begins a mad cycle of two frantic souls which are so different, but still, they have so

47 much in common.

Later in the story, Nora even hires a prostitute named Angel, and she has a task for her, she wants Angel to shoot her directly into her chest while she is wearing her bulletproof vest, willing to pay her an exorbitant amount of 2,000 dollars, just for the that feeling, and when Angel says another thousand dollars, Nora agrees without thinking. Money does not mean anything anymore to her, what should she do with the money when they're all gone? She is totally reconciled to the possibility that Angel does not hit “the destination”; she does not care if she dies, even if it is not the intention, but if by chance, then what. No one left her anyway, except for her brother Matt. During this scene, the song “Angel of Death” sounds from radio. Nora does not seem to be able to carry so much psychological pain, so she has also resorted to the physical one. That comforts her at least for a while (“Guest“-00:04:00-00:07:45).

When she decides to get divorced with his husband (even when he is gone, just in case he came back), she meets with Kevin in the corridor, he holds a divorce paper envelope in his hand. It seems that Nora subconsciously feels that it brings them together more than this coincidence and spontaneously invites him to Miami, but Kevin diplomatically refuses, he has a daughter at home, Nora unreasonably responds to the daughter, but Kevin is obviously a little out of the question, Nora realizes what she said, apologizes him and goes away. At that moment, Nora feels a glimpse of hope and a similar fate. (“Guest” –00:10:45-00:11:50).

Even though The Sudden Departure is a tragedy that marked a lot of people, just as in the real world, there are people who want to earn their grief. “Loved Ones” are available on the market and these wax figures should serve as a device to return people their real loved ones and give them the opportunity e.g. to bury them dignity. They are perfect copies, and in one of the conferences, Nora is acquainted with the man, who

48 produces them, and he shows her his likeness and after a short conversation, he tells her that he would like to kiss her, but he is married and obviously he doesn't take care of it.

Nora starts to kiss the figurine instead, which most likely evokes her ex-man, so the pain of his infidelity awakens in her, and it feels like a way to get him back a little. Her pain multiplies even more when she meets a man in a hotel bar, Patrick Johansen, who wrote the famous What’s Next book. This book expresses his pain of losing four people and the way how to deal with the loss. But Nora calls him a liar when he starts to say that people have to go on and be happy again. Nora gets upset and screams “what’s next, that there is nothing next”. (00:38:42). Soon after that, she randomly meets Holy

Wayne. Yes, the Holy Wayne that is supposedly endowed with a touch that heals the one who takes all the pain, or at least it claims. The moment when Wayne embraces her is very strongly permeated with emotion, one feels the tension in the fingertips, that strong moment Nora is crying in his arms and suddenly the cry is silent (00:46:40). One can say that this touch does not cure her, but it is the first important step to cure, it is not sure if Wayne really cures pain or if he is just a dirty liar (but he prophesied his own death and soon died). One thing is certain, even if his embrace may have just a placebo effect, it works somehow, and Nora starts to feel much better. Soon thereafter, he meets with Kevin again, this time not accidentally; he finds out her address and invites her to a date. It seems that everything starts to get better and Nora begins to feel better. But as was already mentioned, Wayne's healing touch is only the first step to healing, so there is still a long way to go. Apparently, everything turns out to be better. Kevin is dating with Nora, but when she first invites him to her house, she's a little panicked, figuring that she's not ready to really let anyone go “further” yet, further into her inner, closer to herself. And in this moment, we first encounter a gap that plays a major role between them and causes all the problems, it is the communication. As we learned in the last

49 chapter, one of the important keys to healing trauma is to speak out, to confide, talk about it without shame, but Nora and Kevin still don't know how to approach each other properly:

NORA. I don´t know how to talk to you yet.

KEVIN. I don´t know how to talk to you, either. (“Solace for Tired Feet”-

00:14:26)

Her relationship with Kevin deepens, Kevin is about to confide in her, but she doesn't care about it a lot, she has lost her family, which she thinks, it is much worse than his banal problems. When Kevin is in the woods where he and Dean kidnapped Patti, he leaves Nora a message, but Nora doesn't hear his call for help because, at that moment,

Kevin has a faint signal and when Nora finally plays a note, everything she hears is only

“Hi, Nora” and in the rest of the message she hears only noise. But since she had embraced by Wayne she feels a little better, and after three years, she changes the message on her answering machine, no more “Durst Residence”, but it is only herself,

Nora. In the flashback episode, Nora applies for a job and when the councilwoman asks her (later Mayor) why she wants a job, Nora answers “I need something for myself”

(“The Garveys at Their Best-00:15:33). It can be interpreted that she does not want to play only a mother and wife role anymore. She wants to be more. At the time of departure, she is slightly depressed. She wants some excitement in her life and she wants to be taken seriously. Her husband is not valuing her and she wants to move on.

She screams at them because she cannot control her surroundings. She is angry at her life and not at them, and this is why Nora still blames herself, the last memory what she has on them is her shout and spilled orange juice.

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3.4 Matt Jamison Matt (Christopher Eccleston) is Nora's brother, a friend of Kevin Sr., and a preacher who refuses to believe that The Sudden Departure is some rapture. After The Sudden

Departure, Matt gives a leaflet to people to show them the truth, to prove that there was no rapture on that day, but it is only a coincidence. He points out to people who did not act right after “the Holy Scriptures”, and he looks for some dirt. And his behaviour bothers all residents, so Matt often gets into disputes. He doesn't agree with celebrations like Heroes Day is:

MATT. Why are you here? It wasn't the Rapture! They were no better than us! I

have proof! Free of charge. She beat her children. Does that sound like

a good person to you? She beat her children! It was not the Rapture!

(“Pilot”-00:47:00)

At the time when a bank wants to take him one of the few most important things he has

- his church, he starts to behave differently. Gradually, it turns out that he is not as holy as he thinks he is, and he is able to do almost anything to save the church. He's so obsessed with the mistakes of others that he completely overlooks his own. He judges people without knowing them, without knowing what led them to their actions, nor knowing their life situation and thinking and gradually showing that he maybe envied them. The truth is he does not completely follow God's Commandments as well when he lies, gambles and even almost kills a man. Although he ultimately wins money for the church at the casino, the instalment fails to get into the bank in time and the church falls into the clutches of The G.R., as if God sees that he does not deserve the church at such a price, as if he does not want to have anything in common with “dirty” money. Matt is troubled because of his wife Mary (Janel Moloney) with whom they had a car accident.

This incident had happened at the moment of The SD, but nobody cares about it,

51 because at that moment they are all busy with their missing loved ones and moreover they are completely shocked. Since then his woman is completely dependent on the help of others, does not move or perceives, does not speak; she sinks into a coma. Matt blames himself because by that time he also struggles with the illness, and in the day of the car accident, he just finds out that he has overcome the illness, and he intends to celebrate it appropriately, so Mary drives the car and unfortunately, the passenger hits the collision. Thenceforth, Matt constantly remembers the good things that they experience together, and he believes that everything turns out well and one day, Mary wakes up.

3.5 Every End is the New Beginning

The end of the first season is slightly confused, unclear, very emotional and full of sadness and hope. As I mentioned, Laurie is not excited that her daughter Jill joined the

G.R., she begs her to go home, but it is not going to happen. Furthermore, the cult experiences a big day, the biggest event in the last 8 months. (Metallica’s song “Nothing

Else Matters” plays in the background. Haunting string music is a perfect theme for The

Guilty Remnant). It is a day when they decide to make people not to forget. They make faithful copies of theirs disappeared, the so-called “Loved Ones”, and they put them in people's homes. This act makes a lot of people angry and grief and pain change into brutality. People beat them, shoot them, burn dummies in bulk and even set their house on fire, but Jill is in one of them, and this makes Laurie talk after so long time or even screams (”The Prodigal Son Return”-00:42:55).

Meanwhile, Kevin is still in the woods with dead Patti´s body, he calls Matt to help him with the burial of her dead body. When Matt drives him back home, Kevin falls asleep and finds himself in a nightmare again, it looks like that Matt takes him directly to a psychiatric hospital, Kevin defends himself, and shouts that it's a mistake.

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But the guards shut him down, Kevin tries to calm down, and meanwhile, the guards push him through a crack on food, the already mentioned National Geographic magazine. Kevin flips through it and hits the side where the map of Cairo is and there is also the message written in great letters: STOP FUCKING TALKING TO YOURSELF

AND THEY´LL LET YOU WATCH TV. It's obvious the letter is from his father. Later, he meets with a father who claims he is not a fool, and father opposes him that he is not a fool either, they argue for a while, suddenly the father is serious and he swears at somebody, urges his son not to turn, but Kevin turns behind his voice, and he spots Patti

Levin. She greets Kevin and enjoys him with bliss that Kevin is on the verge of collapse because if it is a dream or it is a reality, the last words she tells him before Kevin wakes up are:

PATTI. Now, Kevin, looks like we´re gonna be travelling companions. Until

then...you should wake the fuck up ...she kisses him...Wait the fuck up!

(00:26:45-00:27:20)

Kevin is plagued by terrible remorse; he blames himself and bursts into tears again. He thinks that if he didn't want to leave a family (that didn't work just because of him), he didn't have to lose them, he takes it as a tax for not having enough respect for what he had. During The Great Departure, he doesn´t lose somebody physically, but still, he lost all. At the restroom, he accidentally meets a dying Wayne. Kevin has no idea who he is and that his son is boundless to him, but there is a chance that Wayne probably knows who Kevin is, he does not want any help from Kevin, he just asks him a favour – to wish something (00:33:00). Though the wish does not come out of Kevin's mouth, there is a likelihood that he wishes to have a family again, because the family is what means the most for him. No one really knows if Wayne is really holy or if he is just a cheater,

53 he probably wasn't quite sure about it as well. But it is certain that he partially helped.

Despite that fact it seems Wayne just used Tommy to look after Christine, who by the way has been expecting his child, maybe he gave him something in return. Do you remember his prophecy when they met for the last time and Wayne told Tommy to take care of Christine well because this girl is everything? He probably does not mean

Christine at all, but mostly her newborn child, because this baby girl is the one Tommy leaves on his father's veranda. It is the same child, Nora finds when she is about to break up with Kevin and goes out of town because she is simply “not ready” (after The G.R.´s attack and the rebirth of her family in the form of figurines, all her pain is back), and she writes him a letter explaining her situation. She plans to lay the list on the doorstep, but there she finds a little girl. It seems that this little girl is truly everything because she gives Kevin and Nora hope, hope for a new family, start again and live better. New life always marks a new beginning, but Nora´s words confirm when she tells Kevin “Look what I found” (00:51:37). It can be interpreted as a new sense of life. And If Wayne’s hug is a temporary “shortcut” to Nora's healing, possibly his baby is her bridge to get to the other side of her sadness. Laurie leaves The G.R., and meets with her son Tommy, and Jill returns to his father, so if Kevin really wished his family back, Wayne fulfils this wish and maybe, at the end of the day, he is truly holy.

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4 Miracle The 2nd season of this series moves to Jarden, Texas. Jarden reminds the word “jardin” which is a Spanish word for “garden”, it could symbolize Eden in Heaven. Everyone calls Jarden as Miracle now; it becomes the national park because no one is taken from here during the Sudden Departure. The population of 9261 people believes that they have been chosen, that they are unique and blessed and now Jarden is a holy place in where people travel from all over the world to find salvation, safety, and hope. This is the reason why Kevin, his daughter Jill, his girlfriend Nora, and their adopted baby Lily travel 2,000 miles to start over, in place where everyone is safe. They decide to start again and if would they stay in Mapleton, they would never forget their old life, at least they think it. This chapter will show how the characters deal with their new life together and if they are willing to really start again and to forget all the traumas and problems of the past or if their problems catch them up even here in Miracle.

4.1 Axis Mundi The title of the first episode is Axis Mundi. This term is mentioned already in the previous chapter in connection with Meg Abbott, one of The G.R. members when she is cutting down the tree to break ties with her old life. According to Dr. Rick Diamond,

“Axis Mundi is a world-centre, where people go to encounter the gods, hear from oracles and find healing and transcendence. But there is spiritual gravity in such place:

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The Buddha’s Bodhi Tree, the Navajo Canyon de Chelly, Mount Sinai, Jesus ‘dying hill in Jerusalem are „thin spaces,” to use the Celtic term, and the energy in thin spaces both energizes the soul and strips away attachment and illusion. Flawed human beings can’t stay in Eden” (Diamond). In The Leftovers, the axis is represented by the town of

Jarden, Texas. The people of Jarden believe that a miracle allowed them to be spared by

God. They adopt the idea that Jarden is a bridge between heaven and earth. While this town resembles a veritable paradise, it also possesses some characteristics of the police state with comically militarized Park Rangers in a tyrannical squad of firefighters across a single narrow bridge just outside of paradise lies an encampment of desperate exiled souls.

This episode begins with an iteration of The Sudden Departure set in prehistory a time when myths begin to find their origins. A pregnant woman finds herself in isolation after a cave collapses on top of everyone she's ever known, she gives birth and now she must take care of a vulnerable child with no support from anyone saved from a bird flying high above her who guides her towards signs of other human life. She sacrifices her life to defend her child against the snake. She collapses and dies of the poisonous snake bite but her baby lives. The snake or serpent is a powerful symbol in mythology. Snakes are associated with the earth, nature and with unconsciousness being a representative of the below, snakes are also associated with evil and with chaos, or more unobtrusive in Genesis as the snake in the Garden of Eden, birds, on the other hand, are often the bearers of divine wisdom, they are seen as messengers of the Gods or as Gods themselves because they soar high up in the heavens. Birds also share a symbolic relationship with consciousness because they are that which rises above nature and can see great distances. Bird and snake above and below, heaven and Earth, good and evil, all of these symbols and concepts are set in opposition to one another and are

56 ubiquitous in mythology. This short introduction shows self-sacrifice, unconditional motherly love, loss of community, death, and life. The baby is saved by another woman, this reminds a situation in which Nora Durst in the first season also finds a baby, and this baby changes everything.

4.2 Meet the Neighbours Life in this city is like a dream and unfortunately, not everyone is lucky enough to live here. Everyone wants to live in a city that God has spared and to be safe just in case if a similar event like The Sudden Departure would occur. Kevin and Nora manage to get to

Jarden by invitation from her brother Matt. Nora sells her house in Mapleton, so she can afford to rent a house in Jarden. Kevin is initially angry that Nora does not deal with him about this rent, but he does not want to arouse unnecessarily arguments when they presently form a “new happy family”. The Murphy family lives next to their house.

They consist of four members. (left to right in the picture): Mother Erika Murphy

(Regina King), she works like a doctor who runs the urgent care centre, father John

Murphy (Kevin Carroll), who is a member of the volunteer fire department, son Michael

(Jovan Adepo) who is a far more grounded and religious teenager and finally daughter

Evangeline, called Evie (Jasmin Savoy Brown) who is Michael’s teenage twin sister, she is a bit of a free spirit (Birnbaum).

John Murphy acts like a grouch and he is one of the few who is not proud to be a 57 resident of Jarden, recently known as Miracle. Miracle is a national park that surrounds the city. John is absolutely distrustful, he is angry that people see his city like kind of an amusement park; they sell souvenirs here and pull money from trusting people, so he set fire to the houses of people he doesn’t trust. When his daughter gets lost, he collapses.

Erika Murphy may resemble Kevin Garvey in the days before the tragedy; apparently, she is not happy in her family, gives out insincere smiles. She goes jogging, which could indicate, as in Kevin's case, that she runs away from her family and herself and is about to leave the family, but then Evie disappears and everything changes (“Axis

Mundi”-00:34:13).

Evie is stubborn, brash and disobedient. When she and her friends are running naked in the woods, it is likely Eva, who was driven out of paradise, because she sinned. Evie is about to sin soon when she runs away from the family and joins The

G.R. The worst thing is that she lets everyone think she disappeared like other people during The SD (“A Matter of Geography” – 00:28:00) because her “disappearance” is preceded by a short earthquake and the water of the river mysteriously disappeared.

Later it turns out that Evie and her friends convert to The Guilty Remnant. It turnes out that the girls unite with Meg Abbott (originally a silent and shy Laurie's apprentice) who, incidentally, moves the direction of The G.R. at a completely different level, she is bad, she desires revenge; she heals her complexes on the others. It looks like she has never accepted the fact that her mother had died the day before The Rapture and she remains trapped in her sadness and misunderstanding. In the flashback episode, she and

Evie meet randomly in Jarden, where she (Meg) is with her ex-fiancé, Evie is upset that the residents of Miracle are profiting from the pain of other people, that they behave like nothing bad has happened, and nothing affected them. But that tragedy changes everything and that's why Evie joins The G.R. along with Meg.

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Michael is the complete opposite of his sister Evie. They seem like two different sides, like good and evil. Michael goes preach in church, prays, he is nice, respectable and worthy. He also serves as a mediator for sending letters addressed to Mr. David

Burton, Sydney, Australia. The letters are written by a mysterious man from Jarden, who lost his mind after the SD and now he acts like a Messiah (“Axis Mundi”-

00:17:50).

Michael often visits his grandfather, Virgil, who behaves very strangely; he is something like a local “shaman”. Grandpa is his father's father, and the two don't talk, because John tried to kill him and was in jail for this crime. Michael has even been banned from visiting him, but he ignores it. He helps his grandfather when Kevin dies,

Michael follows instructions Grandpa gives him, and he buries Kevin and then helps him come back to life. Michael hangs out with Kevin's daughter, Jill, but he does not want more than friendship, faith means everything for him.

4.3 Uninvited guest Kevin is not happy since the beginning of the season. Again, he gives out fake smiles, he is constantly nervous. And the reason is simply - an uninvited guest visits him.

In the flashback episode, the plot goes back to Mapleton until the moment Nora finds the baby. The little girl really changes everything. Kevin and Nora confide in each other, Kevin tells Nora about Patti, and Nora admits hiring prostitutes to shoot her in the chest. Jill, who hears everything, is present, but she doesn't care. They all smile (“A

Matter of Geography” -00:07:00). But it seems, Kevin is not entirely excited about the situation. He does not seem to be interested in raising a small, foreign girl, with an almost unknown woman. They give her name Lily. Once he takes care of her and the little girl cries, Kevin instead of comforting her, he puts the earphones on (00:08:34).

When Nora and Kevin adopt her, Kevin plays the role of a happy man, but he is

59 not, there are so many things that bother him. But Nora seems very comfortable. Kevin leaves his job, so he has a lot of free time trying to fill whatever he wants. His thoughts still return to Patti Levin, unable to accept what happened, in the background, we can hear “Where is my mind” song again (00:12:41).His conscience forces him to dig her dead body out, probably to bury her with dignity. After that, he drives her away, but the local police stop him. After finding out that Patti was a member of The Guilty Remnant, the police release him, nobody cares, nobody likes them anyway (The G.R.). When he wants to go home, Patti appears him for the first time (00:24:26). At the time when

Kevin returns home, his father, who is just released from a psychiatric hospital, is there saying he is cured and that he moves to Australia. At the time Kevin asks him if the voices in his head have disappeared, Father tells him that they have not disappeared, but that he has finally begun to listen to what they are saying, so instead of stuck in

Mapleton and staring at the past, he moves on (00:26:00). Kevin's father's words kick him, and he suggests that the family should move out. So the whole family goes to

Jarden, Texas. It appears that Kevin just wants to run away again, he thinks he would leave behind the past and especially his uninvited guest, Patti. He believes that when he will start again, he will be cured as well as his father.

As it was already mentioned, getting to Miracle is not easy at all; everyone would like to live here. Kevin and Nora arrive at Matt's invitation and although they have a reservation, the house they want to rent burned down just before their arrival, but eventually they manage to auction off a new house, Kevin isn´t very excited about it.

Does Kevin think that in Miracle a miracle would happen and all his problems would disappear? Certainly, he hopes for it, but after moving into Miracle, Patti appears him again. Kevin initially completely ignores her directness, behaves like she does not exist,

Patti talks to him, but Kevin doesn't answer her. Obviously, Patti doesn't like it, so when

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Kevin lights his cigarettes at the stove, he grabs his head and slams him on the stove:

PATTI. I´m sorry I had to do that to you, but we just cannot go on with you

treating me like I don´t exist. I do exist. I need you to talk to me. I just

need to talk to…

But Patti doesn't even finish a sentence and Kevin throws her down (00:45:00-

00:45:58). Kevin is angry. Patti's present annoys him, he thinks he will have a peace when he moves out, but everything gets even worse. And worst of all, he moves his anger at Nora. The truth is, he is aware of this and apologizes; he knows that the family is not responsible for his problems. Even if she offers him a helping hand and wants to be entrusted to her, he doesn´t do it this time. He knows that he is moving on very dangerous line now because this disclosure could cause a “trip” to a psychiatric hospital, so he decides to keep his secret for himself, at least for now. When Kevin wakes up in the drained lake, with a brick bandaged around his leg, and moreover, in the same place where Evie Murphy and her friends just disappeared, he doesn't understand what's going on. Unfortunately, he looks into the car by which the girls arrived and leaves a fingerprint on the glass. Moreover, He loses a cell phone in a shallow lake, so he sets off to look for him. He is not even sure if he has something in common with the disappearance of the girls and Patti still follows him. On top of that, his new neighbour,

John, doesn´t trusts him. John is sceptical even before the disappearance of his daughter, but now it is even worse. He takes Kevin behind the bridge where occur people who want to live in Miracle, but they don't have enough money, they're mostly strange people and homeless people who camp there:

JOHN. These fucking people wait for weeks to get in for 10 hours just so they.

They can buy T-shirt.

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KEVIN. I think they´re looking for more than a T-shirt.

JOHN. Yeah? Well, what are you looking for?

KEVIN. A fresh start.

JOHN. No, you paid $3 million for a house that’s cracking apart just so you

could live on the other side of that bridge. What you were looking for is

to feel safe. No safer here than anywhere else. Of that I am sure. There

are no miracles in Miracle. (“Orange Sticker”-00:24:00-00:25:24)

On top of that, Kevin is soaked in trouble by leaving his fingerprint on the car. John suspects people and pulls Kevin into it. Kevin is not honest and keeps this secret for himself. This is mainly because he is not sure what happened to the girls if he hurt them or not. He's not sure anymore what's going on. In the fourth episode, he talks with Patti for the first time, but he still believes that it's just a figment of his imagination; he refuses to believe it is real. But Patti tells him in detail what really happened on the day of the earthquake. She says that Kevin wanted to commit suicide. Kevin is crying, and

Patti convinces him that the girls really disappeared, out of nowhere (“Orange Sticker”-

0049:00). But this is a lie because later in the series the girls reappear. So we can only argue whether Kevin really wanted to kill himself, or if Patti just wanted to catch up with him if it was just her retribution. She causes him purposely a lot of trouble; it looks like she enjoys that she is the reason for his worries.

When Kevin finally decides to tell Nora the truth about seeing Patti, her reaction is a little different than he expects. Nora is leaving, and Patti blames him for telling

Nora about her. Kevin gets to the situation when he and Patti lead the normal conversation, and he even listens to her advice, he seems to do the same as his father was. Earlier, father told him he heard voices telling him what to do, and Patti does the same for Kevin. And like his father, he doesn't admit he's crazy. When Michael Murphy

62 learns from Jill what's going on with her father, he knows what to do. Unlike the others, he trusts him and takes him to his grandfather Virgil, who probably sees the people's future and the past. But Kevin already knows Virgil, he realizes that he has already met

Virgil when he was sleepwalking, but of course, he doesn't remember anything as usual.

Virgil knows about Kevin´s struggle and he has a recipe for him to solve his problem.

Because Virgil had been in a similar situation as Kevin, he also had his opponent. The solution is that Kevin has to die to compete with Patti and then to be reborn. Kevin doesn't even want to hear about it; he seems to be afraid, he doesn't trust Virgil, but Patti urges him to do it, she looks like she truly wants to fight against him, but she probably doesn't believe Kevin would do something like this.

Later, his ex-wife Laurie arrives into Miracle because she thinks their son

Tommy is there, can't find him and after their quarrel, Tommy leaves her. As a psychologist, Laurie observes immediately that Kevin is in a psychotic break. He believes that Laurie, as a specialist, could help him, so he confides her:

LAURIE. What you are seeing is not real. I know your dad struggled with this as

well. And there is a research indicating that there is a genetic link…

KEVIN. She´s there. She´s right there. She´s real.

LAURIE. You believe that?

KEVIN. Yes.

LAURIE. Can I tell you about belief, Kevin? When the mind is in emotional

distress, it will grasp at any construct that makes it feel better. After

the 14th, the whole world needed to feel better. We were all in

emotional distress. So that made all of us susceptible to false belief, to

be taken advantage of. And the reason I know this, Kevin, is because

Tommy and I use it – There is no Patti, Kevin. There is only you,

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Kevin.

KEVIN. So what do I do?

LAURIE. You need to go on medication and maybe go away for a little while.

What you´re dealing with is very serious, Kevin. And I know it´s

scary, but that´s why you need to do. You need help. (“A Most

Powerful Adversary”-00:40:18-00:43:00)

Kevin doesn´t pay much attention to her advice and he decides to visit Virgil, even though he is firstly sceptical, he doesn´t find another solution, so he decides to drink poison and dies. Immediately afterward, Virgil shot his head; probably not bearing in mind that his son John wouldn't talk to him anymore and that he'd accidentally hurt him.

Kevin drinks the poison, dies and later he is buried by Michael. The underworld that

Kevin enters feels more like a crazy dream than anything else; he emerges from a hotel bathtub symbolizing his entering into the unconscious part of his psyche. Consciously undergoing this process allows Kevin to create a bridge between his ego and his true self. He assumes the character of an international assassin, which represents Kevin's hidden desire to run away from his family and to be a mysterious bachelor. When Kevin gets dressed, he notices the sign on the wardrobe, it says “Know first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly”, this may resembles instead of the word “adorn”, the word, “adore”, it would be great advice for Kevin, because he appears in this place to know himself properly. This sign appears twice times in the episode. Later Kevin is captured by The G.R. members who connect him to a lie detecting machine and force him to tell the truth.

During this episode, we can hear Verdi's Opera called Nabucco, which perfectly complements the atmosphere. Nabucco is a story about the exile of the Jews from

Jerusalem after they turned to excess, idolatry blasphemy, and the chorus is a cry of

64 hope from the Jews who aspire to be returned to the grace of God and to have their kingdom taken up once again after the many years of suffering. According to medicine and surgery students, psychic signs and symptoms attributed to Nabucco in Verdi’s opera could have been influenced by a better knowledge of neuropsychiatric diseases in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the representation of Nabucco’s mental illness in the opera could have been influenced by direct experiences of the Italian composer himself, who seems to have suffered from recurrent depressive episodes in that period, and for the rest of his life. Moreover, he probably suffers from delirium, the same disease as Kevin does in this episode (Cambioli et al.).

When Patti dies in the first season, she wants Kevin to understand her, but he refuses, so she cuts her throat, now he finally admits that he does understand Patti deep down, he feels as lost and hopeless as everyone else, including The G.R. and although

Kevin's tears are forced out of him by window cleaner he is still making his first honest connection with his deeper true self. Gladys allows him to meet with Patti who assumes a strong and dominant role as a senator and a presidential candidate, during this meeting

Patty tells Kevin story about an orphan:

PATTI. Young man hand me the baby and he just walk away. He gave me his

child and he disappeared. Police couldn´t find him. No wife or mother

stepped forward to claim it. And that baby is now in orphanage and it´s

gonna be fine. It´s gonna grow up and it´s gonna have difficulty

attaching to people and it´s gonna have difficulty giving and accepting

love. But Kevin, that is no longer a difficulty. It is strength. It is a

survival mechanism. Because on October 14th, attachment and love

became extinct. (“International Assassin”-00:31:48-00:32:42)

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The orphan is probably Kevin who has become disaffected from his father and has lost any kind of connection to his lifeguard. In the middle of a culture that seems to be collapsing around him, Kevin is a kind of psycho-spiritual banishment.

Kevin's father, instructs him to take Patti to a well and to throw her in. In this strange underworld of his unconsciousness, Kevin follows his father´s mysterious instructions as he always listened to his pieces of advice. Later in the story, Kevin meets

Neil, Patti´s cheating verbally abusive husband, and he strangles him to death, dispensing with another aspect of his extramarital guilt, finally, Kevin meets the child form of Patti Levin, who has been his spiritual guide and tormentor but presently she looks like an innocent victim. Kevin takes a little girl to Jarden across the bridge to the orphans well; he pushes Patti in liberating himself of the image of her as a small harmless girl. Kevin climbs into the well after her into the deepest and the darkest place, into the conduit between worlds and learns how Patti was too afraid to leave her husband even though she had more than enough money to go through with him. Patti was too afraid to face the world and too afraid to transform. Kevin says goodbye to Patti one last time and drowns her at the bottom of the well. He climbs out of the well out of the underworld, reborn, renewed and finally transformed, at least he believes into it.

This act has a deeper sense.

From the perspective of psychologists and psychoanalysts like Stanley Krippner,

David Feinstein, Carl Jung, and brilliant others, the reason the mythological hero must travel downward, through the underworld, through death and chaos is to make a symbolic connection with the unconscious, when a bridge is constructed between the two worlds, upper and lower, of the human psyche, the ego can discover the truth about the self which is a symbol for all the dimensions of one's personality, both good and evil both conscious and unconscious, psychological transformation is what results from the

66 unification of the opposites (Krippner and Feinstein). Kevin's journey into the underworld enables him to build a bridge between the parts of himself that he identifies as good in the parts that he identifies as evil, he emerges from this near-fatal struggle as a man who is stronger than he was before, a man who is able to exist in the world with a better understanding of who he is, what he wants and how he feels. Kevin now truly believes that he deserves to return home to his family and to be loved, but Kevin must undergo one final test before he could come back home. Even if Kevin looks like a strong, masculine, stubborn man, he must adopt something, emotional and feminine within himself; he must risk looking stupid in front of a crowd of strangers and sings karaoke even though he hates it. When Kevin finally arrives home bloody and injured, but surprisingly not dead, all his family is waiting for him including Tommy, Laurie,

Matt and his wife Mary. Kevin made the ultimate sacrifice and nearly paid for it with his life; his sacrifice has led him to this point of resolution in the story. But his journey for healing is not ended yet.

In the second season Kevin´s daughter Jill Garvey, she behaves differently than in the first season, she constantly smiles, takes care of a little girl, she has a great relationship with Nora, Jill seems to have missed a woman in her family. But she's not quite honest with his father, because she secretly sees her brother, who at the end of the first season left with his mother Laurie. Moreover, Jill is the only one who knows that

Tommy left Lily on the porch. Jill knows that Tommy rests with her mother, Laurie tries to contact her with his help, but Jill doesn't want to hear about her, she can't forget she left when she needed her most. When Laurie appears in the doorway of their new home in Jarden, she is absolutely upset, she doesn't ready to forgive her, doesn't want to see her. Meanwhile, she experiences a break from a new relationship with his neighbour’s son, Michael, who prefers church and his faith to the romance with Jill.

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Laurie Garvey goes to the other side after leaving the cult and starts to fight against The Guilty Remnant and persuades people to leave the cult. She even writes her book of torture, which she experienced as a member. She wants to be completely cut off from them. She stops smoking, helps people get out of the clutches of The G.R. and prepares them for their return to their families. Laurie thinks she's doing a good job; she was a great psychologist before the tragedy, so she leads the debate very psychologically. Looks like she's just feeling really guilty right now, especially because she's been out on his family and especially his daughter, who really needed her at that time, trying to connect with her through Tom, but Jill doesn't care. Later, she even kills two members on the road by car and enjoys it greatly; she is very angry with them. The family means everything for her and The G.R. ruined her connection to them, she does not realize that no one has forced her to go over to them, but now she claims to everyone that the G.R. is only a sect that keeps people on the move (“Lens”-00:26:18).

Her book, Guilty, does not meet with great success, her ward dies, she commits suicide, so the only hope is to give people more than The G.R does. And so Tommy's journey as the successor to Holy Wayne begins. Together, they prepare a session for people who believe Tom's touch is healing.

Tom Garvey is now helping his mother drag and drops people from The G.R. together, they have sessions with them and they try to explain to them what's going on in that cult and the top of their treatment is Tommy's embrace that apparently takes over the power of his ex-leader, Holy Wayne. But everything is fake, prepare in advance.

Laurie is suddenly fighting so much against her ex-organization that she doesn't even mind lying. Tom behaves like a member of The G.R. just to lure members to join them, but one of them reveals him. And Meg Abbott, who is now the leader of the entire cult, she rapes him and frightens him, everything because of Laurie, who recruited her to the

68 cult and helped her integrate there. Tommy does not agree with what they do with his mother, it reminds him a sect similar to The G.R., because he and his mother are also forcing people, persuading, hiring people, living in one house, having sessions. He suffers from depression; he drinks too much alcohol. His desperation goes up when he quarrels with her mother and runs away from her.

4.4 New hope At the beginning of the season, Nora seems to be really happy. Now, she has a purpose.

She takes care of the little babygirl, Lily and she finally moves from Mapleton which reminds her everything bad. But in the fourth episode, immediately after the earthquake, and after a discovery that Kevin is not come back home tonight, Nora is experiencing a

PTSD attack, flooded with a huge wave of fear and hope, scattered and shocked, even fainting, it seems like déjà vu and she calls 911:

911. 911, What´s your emergency?

NORA. Did…did it happen again?

911. Ma´am can you repeat…

NORA. I can´t find my…my boyfriend isn´t here…Did…did it happen?

911. Ma´am if you´ve experienced the earthquake…

NORA. No, no, not the fucking earthquake! Not the fucking earthquake. Did

it…did.. Are the people gone? Are they gone?!...Suddenly, Kevin

appears at the door. (“Orange Sticker”-00:03:14-00:03:38)

Since the girls disappeared, everything is getting worse. However, Nora is one of the few who does not believe that girls would disappear randomly. According to her, The

SD was only a one-off event. Thanks to her work she meets people who made up their departure and lived secretly elsewhere, so Nora is distrustful.

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Nora knows very well that something is wrong with Kevin. He knows Kevin is sleepwalking, so she decides to tie him up with police handcuffs for the nights.

Moreover, Nora suffers from depression because the people of the authorities think she has something to do with the disappearance of Evie, they constantly contact her and ask her special questions. In addition, Nora has to permanently take care of her brother's wife, Mary, and she starts getting lost. She really believed that when she moved out of

Mapleton, everything would turn out to be better, but that wouldn't happen. Not yet.

When a man from the department of the Sudden Departure arrives in the city to talk to the Murphys, Nora searches for him to ask him the questions she would like to answer.

She worries that she could be really responsible for her disappearance, both her family and Evie and her friends:

NORA. Have you ever heard of someone being responsible for another person´s

departure?

GEORGE. You mean the lensing thing?

NORA. Lensing?

GEORGE. You know like a lens. Like a kid taking a magnifying glass and frying

ants with it. The idea is that someone gives off ultraviolet rays or

whatnot, causing everyone around them to lift. (“Lens”-00:17:00)

Nora is quite concerned about this information and is more interested in the issue.

Scientists think that Nora is a lens because Azrael demon dwells in her body. Azrael is known as the Angel of Death. This figure is responsible for taking the soul of every person and returning it to God. The truth is, Nora is definitely feeling like the Angel of

Death and if you remember in the first season when Nora is shot by a prostitute to the chest, “the Angel of Death” song plays. This idea goes far beyond the normal

70 understanding and it seems even funny to Nora. Besides, she discovers that Kevin sees

Patti Levin and it's the last straw for her. She takes Lily and leaves Kevin unable to cope with the fact that Kevin is sharing his soul with somebody else.

4.5 Miracle in Miracle Matt Jamison and Mary move to Jarden just before Nora and Kevin. Matt temporarily helps out in the local church. He's completely obsessed with the idea that Miracle is a truly miraculous city, and he believes that if they live here with Mary now, she will miraculously recover. They are among those who believe that this place is real, that miracles are happening here. Nora is angry with him and she blames Matt that she lives here because of him, she believes that everything is going to improve, but nothing is better. Matt decides to tell her why he still believes in happy end:

MATT. Mary woke up.

NORA. What?

MATT. The very first night we were here. I thought I was dreaming, but she was

back. I said we should go back to the hospital, but Mary, she just

wanted to talk. The last thing she remembers was the accident, so I told

her everything what happened since. We talked for hours. And we cried.

Until we fell asleep in each other´s arms. And when I woke up, she was

like this again. (“Orange Sticker-00:38:55-00:40:00)

Since then, Matt tries to make Mary wakes up again. It becomes his obsession. Every day he does a series of repetitive rituals like the day Mary woke up. He is willing to do anything for her recovery. Later, she learns that Mary is pregnant, even though before the accident, they had tried ten years for the child without success. He suggests that they made love when Mary was in her senses. But no one knows if it's just Matt´s

71 imagination or if he tells the truth. Maybe Mary's pregnancy is just a gift from heaven, the same situation as with baby Jesus and Mary, maybe it is just a miracle. Either way, in Miracle, a miracle really happened. From now on, however, Matt is not only in charge of one person, but he is also very concerned about their unborn child. When an unknown man attacks them and steals their bracelets (new residents must wear bracelets to get into the city), he is very angry. As already mentioned, he is able to do everything to save his wife and child. Matt behaves as aggressively as he did in the first season when he raised money for his church. He is a good and honest man, but when something is wrong with his loved ones or with something he really cares about, he is able to go through the corpses. Moreover, he is very worried that people now judge him as a violent man; nobody believes that Mary really “came back”. Ultimately, Matt decides for suffering, as if to show God that he is willing to suffer, that he does not want this gift for free. By the suggestion of the pop culture writer and critic, Jen Chaney,

Matt, as a man of faith, he has always believed in two truths: those good people are rewarded, and that God will eventually alleviate suffering. It’s no surprise that when

Brett Butler’s character asks Matt to name his favourite Biblical book, he says Job. It’s

Job who says: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return.”Perhaps that’s why, at the end of the fifth episode, Matt returns to the refugee camp, strips off his clothes and places himself in a torture device. Matt sees himself in

Job’s image; a man “blameless and upright,” who must suffer tremendously before reaping the benefits (Chaney).In the background, Regina Spektor's song called “No

One's Laughing at God” plays, Matt is ready to show him that this miracle doesn't take lightly at all, he wants to show people that he really deserves this wonder and that he really does not “laugh at God” at all (“No Room at the Inn”-00:54:00).

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4.6 A Long Way to Go The second season ends on the fourth anniversary of The Departure. Meg wants to destroy everything; she plans this event for a very long time; she drives the car to the bridge that usually connects with a miracle, even the “missing” girls are hiding in the car, but they are not the girls who used to be, because if you remember one of their motto is that “there is no family”. This situation ends tragically, Meg blows up Miracle

National Park´s hall with members of The G.R. in there, chaos is everywhere.

Moreover, Tommy is apparently in love with Meg, so he joins the other side for a while, the evil side, but his heart doesn´t let him, so he returns home with Nora and Lily, whom he accidentally meet when he was about to move to the other side. Is Miracle so miraculous after all? In a way, a miracle really happened in Miracle. Firstly, Nora finally forgives Kevin. Secondly, Mary Jamison wakes up from her vegetative status.

And last but not least, Kevin wakes up, raises from the dead, and everything seems to be better now. Patti is gone, and his whole family is waiting for him at home, the family means the most for Kevin, family, and love seem to be his means of healing, but unfortunately, there is still a long way to go.

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5 Australia

The third and final series of this season is largely set in Melbourne, Australia. Australia is a very magical place as such. This chapter will show the continuation of the main character story and their struggle with the trauma, this chapter provides the answers, if the characters finally heal themselves and if so what kind of procedures do they use.

5.1 Messiah

Kevin initially thinks he's finally cured; he begins to work as a police chief in Jarden, and along with Tommy, who also becomes a police officer, he now arranges the order in himself, who were previously unaware. Kevin seems to be satisfied with the direction of his life. As the chief of the police Kevin assumes the highest authority in Jarden, which is now open to the world as a destination for thousands of religious people and Kevin has finally become the support of his family and community needed all along.

Later in the story, Dean, the mysterious man who keeps him the company in the first series, reappears in his life; it looks like a reversed role. This time, Kevin is the one who is convinced that he is mentally healthy, convinces Dean that he is paranoid and everything happens only in his head, and he even claims that Dean is a fool, which is quite a paradox to what he has been experiencing all the time. But Kevin is not cured at all. He often tries to move again to “the other side” by putting a plastic bag around his neck and shortly before the air is gone, he always tears the bag or he jumps into the river people claim is poisoned without thinking. Finally, Kevin recommends a psychologist to Tommy, after the attack of Dean, and Tommy kills him. But in fact,

Kevin is the one who needs the help of psychologist most of all. Moreover, everyone now considers him a Messiah or a God, and Kevin does not identify with it at all. He is very angry with Matt and also calls him a fool.

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Meanwhile, Kevin's father is looking for a song in Australia that is supposed to save humanity from the end of the world, which is due to come again on October 14th and be a big flood:

Kevin Garvey, Sr. On the seventh year anniversary of The Sudden Departure: I

believe the rain will come and with them a great flood. I have

to sing to make it stop. (“Crazy Whitefella Thinking”-

00:26:00)

He believes that Christopher Sunday, the Indigenous elder can help teach him the song which can stop the rain. But it is not going to happen. Chris Sunday accidentally dies when Kevin, Sr. falls on him from the top of the roof. It is likely Kevin, Sr., he chooses these people because in part of them he sees himself, the Indigenous people still remain misunderstood, they have their own language, their traditions, and many people think that they are actually some crazy people who can't accept the fact that they are the 21st century. Medora Woods declares that encounters between the reconquest consciousness of our indigenous ancestors and another world view drove that part of our psychic inheritance into our personal and cultural unconscious (Woods 425).

Over the course of the third series, Kevin repeatedly returns to the past — he suffers from flashbacks and hallucinations when he thinks he sees Evie Murphy in

Australian TV, he pursues her, but after a telephone conversation with Laurie, he realizes, what he sees is only his imagination, he admits that he really doesn´t see Evie and everything is only in his head. Cathy Caruth suggests that “what one returns to in the flashback is not the incomprehensibility of one’s near death, but the very incomprehensibility of one’s own survival. Repetition, in other words, is not simply the attempt to grasp that one has almost died but, more fundamentally and enigmatically, the very attempt to claim one’s own survival. If history is to be understood as the history

75 of a trauma, it is a history that is experienced as the endless attempt to assume one’s survival as one’s own” (Caruth 64).

But Kevin´s search does not stop here because there are chaotic elements in his soul that he has to face. In this part, the representation of Kevin shadow-self appears again. The two personalities that Kevin assumes in his fantasy of the underworld are the international assassin who deserves to live his life as a free bachelor free from the trapping of his familiar life and the second character is the president who represents The

G.R. who believes that marriage and families should be destroyed. As president, Kevin is a typical example of his good side, a respectable person who protects the inhabitants and he is dressed in white clothes as a symbol of purity, the symbol of goodness. By contrast, Kevin as a bounty hunter represents his dark side, instead of helping people, he kills them. Hunter probably symbolizes his trapped soul and a symbol of evil. Kevin represents either of these characters, but only when looking into a mirror threw self- reflection. Kevin is giving three tasks to accomplish in his latest entry into the underworld of his subconscious, and he fails by completing all of them. He delivers

John´s message to Evie telling her that she is loved, but she does not believe him. He asks one of the Playford´s what happened to their shoes; the boy replied does it matter?

Christopher Sunday helps him understand that he does not even believe in his father's delusional narrative, in fact, there is no song to stop the rain. Kevin has gone deep down into his psyche. What is certain is the importance of the narrative that takes place between the two parts of his soul. Kevin as president is taken to a bunker where the secretary of defence, Patti Levin prepares a nuclear strike that will end the world. Patti claims that she is doing this to help Kevin:

PATTI. You help me, Kevin and now I am here to help you.

KEVIN. Help me how?

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PATTI. Well, what do you want?

KEVIN. I want to go home.

PATTI. Do you?

KEVIN. What?

PATTI. It´s just the thing you said before and yet you keep leaving home and

coming here. In sense in a lot of internal contradictions from you Kevin,

it sounds like something you need to work out with yourself. (“The Most

Powerful Man in the World (and His Identical Twin Brother)”-00:44:12-

00:44:40)

And the two of Kevin´s characters finally meet. The tug of war that these two unconscious personalities have been playing for Kevin´s soul has come to the head.

According to Medora Woods “The “other” and the collective serve primarily as mirrors of our projections, allowing us to withdraw those projections and reclaim disowned parts of the personality. Although these views of the collective are not false or wrong, they are profoundly one-sided” (Woods 420). The president and the assassin are forced to read the romance novel they co- authoring, this novel is actually the pathetic tragedy that Kevin has been authoring for himself who contains the most painful truths of all.

The delusion and psychosis this constantly struggling and looking for sanity which preoccupies Kevin all these years was just really distraction of what really matters for him, Nora. Nora is his key to healing. And this metaphorical key to the ultimate transformation lies at the heart of the sacrifices and it is the most difficult to make,

Kevin must reach into his own heart in order to unify with himself. His evil, psychotic side finally dies. The God of Kevin unconscious David Burton and Patty Levin were helping Kevin all along by pushing him towards understanding himself and what he must do. Kevin launches the nuclear strike and watches his fantasy erodes in the fire

77 explosion.

Kevin´s ex-wife, Laurie Garvey becomes Laurie Murphy, she is married to John

Murphy and they together “heal” people; later she becomes Kevin's psychologist and finally psychologist of Nora. The sixth episode reveals the true reason for her misery and the reason she joins The Guilty Remnant. At the time before the tragedy, Laurie is very unhappy with the fact that as a psychologist, she should help people, but after The

SD she is unable to help them anymore. This fact really breaks her. Outwardly, she seemed like a confident and balanced woman, she wants to be here for her family and for her patients, but she cannot anymore, and she even thinks about committing suicide.

It seems the decision of joining the cult is liberation for her but as it turns out later, her real salvation is her husband John Murphy, who gives her a new sense of life, and last but not least it is love and help to others, especially Kevin with whom even after divorce remain in a very good relationship.

5.2 Salvation Nora returns to her work in the Disappeared Department. Outwardly, she looks like a

78 hard and finally balanced woman. Inside, however, she feels different, she must give back their adopted girl Lily to the biological mother, and Nora can't accept it, another loss is a little over the line for her. Later, a man named Mark Linn-Baker calls her, the man from The Perfect Strangers Series (who played Cousin Larry), faced his own disappearance. He asks her if she would like to see her children again, she is angry that someone can joke about such a situation, but the truth is that since then this idea resonates in her head and in fact she wants nothing more than to see and find out again what really happened and where her family is. Apparently, there is some kind of device that, with the help of radio waves, can transfer a person to the other side where he meets his beloved.

Later, Nora and Kevin leave for Australia, despite her distrust in the corner of her heart, she desires to go through the facility and see her children again. Nothing matters else matters, nor even Kevin. At the end of the fourth episode, they have a bad fight, and Kevin, after he burns his “book” called The Book of Kevin, leaves her, the fire triggers an alarm, and when the alarm activates the water and the water pulls down from her face along with tears, it looks like an eternal flood to get all the pity, emotions and pain out.

5.3 Obsession Ever since Matt's wife Mary recovers and then gives birth to a healthy child, after predicting doctors who claimed that she never recovers, he begins to believe in miracles and supernatural occurrences. He believes that Kevin is the Messiah, he even writes something like a holy book about him, The Book of Kevin, and he becomes convinced that his resurrection is due to the place where they live, the holy Jarden. Later, Matt leaves his wife Mary with her baby, because Matt becomes obsessed with her recovery and forbids her to leave the city.

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Despite leaving his wife, Matt is very busy with Kevin and his important role and is convinced Kevin is the saviour of the world from the apocalypse. Medora Woods claims that when we fear the end of the world, we are caught in the illusion of linear time and the archetype of the apocalypse. Even if our bodies appear to live in linear time, our souls do not and the soul of the world does not. Perhaps these times are the beginning of a world yet to be (Woods 418). Therefore, Matt decides to go to Australia to get Kevin back home to Jarden, a holy place till the seventh anniversary of The SD.

Eventually, he manages to get into a ship full of strange people who worship the lion

Frasier, indulge in sexual orgies. The story of Frasier the lion might have ended gruesomely but this lion was special. Despite the fact, the lion was 19 years old, he was old and ill, much to his handlers’ surprise, and he then became a hit with the lionesses.

Within one day of meeting him, the same lionesses that refused to mate with several young lions and seven weeks later, they were all pregnant. Within 16 months, he had fathered 33 cubs. He becomes famous for this, and is something like God between animals (Berman). There is also a man, David Burton, who claims to have survived his own death and is now God. The name David Burton is heard earlier in the series. For the first time in the news reports last season, he dies and resurrects in Perth and the second time this name is written on a letter sent by Michael from the mysterious man in

Jarden’s downtown tower. Matt is upset, not willing to accept the idea that there are two

Gods, claiming that David Burton is just a liar. At the end of the episode, David Barton is torn by a lion that represented Frasier. It is likely; most of Matt's troubles are caused by his fatal illness. The cancer is back. For a long time, he keeps this secret for himself and generally everyone who is sick is irritated and this person hopes for recovery. It looks like Matt hopes Kevin saves not only the whole world but mainly that he is going to be saved. But this miracle does not happen and Matt knows he has to die. Although

80 he is afraid, he is finally reconciled to everything that comes next.

5.4 Love is the Key

In this season, Kevin and Nora´s relationship with each other has stabilized; their relationship with the truth is not. Kevin cannot tell Nora about his experience of death and resurrection and Nora cannot tell Kevin she's still struggling to deal with the loss of her family, especially after giving Lily back to her biological mother. Nora struggles to find absolution leads her further away from Kevin. From this distance, Kevin starts to come back to his psychosis.

Finally, Nora decides to enter the facility, even if there is a big possibility that she does not survive, there is still a minimal chance that she could see her children again. In addition, she and Kevin break up shortly before, so nothing stops her. After she goes through the machine and then comes back, Nora stays in Australia for many years alone. She believes in the corner of the soul that someone will finally find her, and finally Kevin finds her, he never gives up, and he has been searching for her all these years. Even though it seems that decades have passed, Kevin never gave up his search for Nora. As he said, people still hold candles. Nora reveals Kevin the story about the other side to see her family, only to realize that she did not belong there, she tells him why she came back and why she has been living her life in isolation. She decides that no one ever believe what had happened to her. It's hard to say if she went through the facility or not, and if her story from the final scene is fictional or not, for her, it's important that someone believes her and listens to her. For all past years, she is afraid to speak with Kevin because she has a feeling he wouldn't believe her either, just as she doesn't trust him many times before. And shortly thereafter, she realizes that her “cure” is in fact very simple, it is the understanding, her ability to speak things straight, and especially her love for Kevin. He and Nora were together for years but never accepted

81 the idea that they could be honest with each other, that they could feel completely safe and secure in their relationship that they could be completely exposed with one another.

Three years Kevin and Nora fail to trust and be trustworthy, they fail to be honest and open with each other, they fail to work on their story together and build a coherent relationship with one another, they spend decades apart and now enter the dusk of their lives, they find each other despite all complications and now they have a chance to try again, they have a new chance to believe in one another and to write their story for the rest of their lives. Finally, after all these years, they're really here for each other.

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6 Conclusion Every single day something unpredictable happen in this world— a terrible event that affects many people. People with a stronger nature may not succumb to subsequent suffering; each has a bearing threshold differently. Such an event may be a tsunami in

Thailand, devastating fires in Australia, a terrorist attack, but even the death of a loved one or a divorce. Although The Leftovers is fiction, the story of the series is often compares to the event 9/11, which still remains unsolved. Traumatic feelings resonate throughout all three seasons. Each character deals with different types of trauma, even though they all have the trauma that linked them, The Sudden Departure. The main point of this series, however, is not the event itself, but rather the observation of characters and their ways to heal after the tragedy. Nobody finds out where and why everybody departed, that is not the core of this series. The whole series is accompanied by music, which perfectly illustrates the atmosphere of the whole story. The first season accompanies a serious orchestral piece by Max Richter, through the season two resonates Iris Dement’s folksy jaunt Let the Mystery Be, and the third season attends different song in each episode, according to the situation of that episode, from the

Gravediggaz’ 1-800-Suicide to the theme song from Perfect Strangers.

Kevin Garvey, the protagonist of the whole story suffers from multiple symptoms of the PTSD. He has nightmares, flashbacks, he sleepwalks; he suffers from hallucinations, depression. The main part of his trauma is not the tragedy itself but mainly the feeling of loneliness. During the first season, Kevin swallows pills, drinks alcohol in large quantities, has a bad relationship with his daughter, and finally abducts

Patti Levin, who later commits suicide. She also meets Nora Durst. In the second series, he starts to see dead Patti Levin, who encourages him to drink poison and then he resurrects, even twice times. For the first time after overcoming Patti Levin, and the

83 second time, he dies involuntarily; he is shooting by John Murphy because he thinks

Kevin has hurt his daughter Evie. He moves with Nora from Mapleton, NY to Jarden,

Texas called Miracle. They want to start living a new, better life here, but Nora doesn´t support Kevin; moreover, she does not trust him. During the third season, there a situation which bothers him, although he died, he is still alive and paradoxically, when he is dead he feels the most alive. He hates the idea that people see him as the Messiah who should save the world from the great flood. During the second and also third season, he confides to Laurie as she is a psychologist, which is probably one of the reasons Kevin feels much better and confident throughout the last season. Yet, despite all the obstacles and suffering, Kevin heals. His key to happiness is his unconditional love for Nora.

Laurie Garvey, later Laurie Murphy is a woman who wants to help people desperately; she loves her work as a psychologist. However, after the tragedy, she has no idea how she could help people, this situation troubles her, and that is also one of the reasons why she joins The Guilty Remnant cult. Later in the story, she leaves the cult and moves to Jarden in where she meets her recent husband John Murphy. Above all, her trauma is caused mainly by a departure from her family, which is later criticized by her daughter Jill. Laurie´s means of healing is John, who shows her a new sense of life and helps her to reconcile with her children and last but not least the opportunity to help people as a psychologist that is her mission.

Jill Garvey is an eyewitness of The Great Departure, and she is very concerned about it, mainly because the mother leaves her after the tragedy. Jill doesn´t want to forgive her for a long time because at the moment she leaves her, she is a teenage girl who needs her mother the most. She has not a good relationship with her father either.

In the second series, Jill changes, she helps Nora to take care of adopted girl Lily and

84 even her relationship with the father is stabilized. She also forgives her mother, Laurie.

Forgiveness is her key to healing. Her brother Tom Garvey goes through many obstacles, from Holy Wayne's cult, unhappy love when he falls in love with Christine to his depression drowns in alcohol when he and his mother lie to people. Later he almost joins The Guilty Remnant, for Meg Abbott. Tommy's problem is that he still needs to look up to someone, needs someone to guide him and to show him the way, he isn´t sure who he really is and what he wants. When he becomes a policeman like his father, he finally becomes happy and fulfilled, having authority to look up and do the right thing, to help people deal with their problems.

Nora's story allows looking into the nooks of the sullen woman who loses the whole family during the tragedy; the only one left behind is her brother Matt. Nora is often irritated, aggressive, depressed and unable to cope with the loss of her family, especially her children Erin and Jeremy. She is convinced that her means of healing are reuniting with her children, but eventually, after years of living alone in Australia, she understands that she has her medicine right in front of her eyes. Kevin and Nora heal each other, even though it sounds like a cliché, it is love that helps them and also a narration of a whole story, a narration of all their struggles of the past. And Laurie, as her psychologist, helps her as well because she is in contact with her for all these years she lives in Australia.

The representation of trauma at Matt Jamison is also an interesting part of the story. He fights with illness and, on the day of the tragedy, he and his wife have a car accident, and he has to look after her since then. Though Matt is a preacher, he has to face his demons in various forms, e.g. when he is gaming in the Casino because he doesn´t have enough money to buy his church back. Unfortunately, Matt is the only one who does not recover, his cancer returns back, and he dies. The positive thing is that his

85 wife wakes up from her vegetative status and they have a son together so even though he dies, he is completely reconciled.

Each character is different, but they all together have a common denominator, it is a hope. Although The Leftovers is a fictional story, it contains a lot of mystery, and someone might find this story even totally pointless, it is up to everyone to find in this series something for themselves. In fact, almost all the problems that each of us can encounter in personal life are under the cover of some story which is full of nightmares, sleepwalking, depression, hallucinations or feelings of inferiority. After all of the struggles the characters meet with, this show has a happy ending, and that is important - after every rain, the sun comes out.

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Summary This work deals with the depiction of trauma and its subsequent healing in the American

TV series called The Leftovers. The creators of this successful series are mainly Tom

Perrotta and Damon Lindelof. The work deals with all three seasons that have been aired at HBO from June 2014 until June 2017. This series met with inconsistent views and has both its lovers and opponents. The most successful, however, is the first line of the series.

The thesis is divided into six chapters; apart from the introduction and conclusion chapters, the thesis is supported by factual subchapters. The first chapter is an introduction to the issues related to trauma; the second chapter solves the different types of trauma, it contains the chapter about the event 9/11 as well as the explanation of the healing procedures. Three more chapters observe the storylines of the main characters, each suffering from a different kind of trauma, the last chapter offers conclusion.

The aim of this work is to monitor the development of trauma in the individual characters with subsequent evaluation of their problems and also the process of recovery. The victims of trauma try to overcome their struggles and fully heal their souls. Besides other important sources, Unclaimed Experience by British professor

Cathy Caruth contributes to a better understanding of the subject, as well as notes written by the Swiss physician and psychotherapist, Carl Gustav Jung, which deal with dream interpretation and other important facts related to this topic. The analysis concludes that, despite many obstacles, the protagonists resolve their problems; they are finally able to cope with their trauma and heal their body and mind.

Keywords: Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers, trauma, healing, stress,

Cathy Caruth, depression, Posttraumatic stress disorder, sleepwalking, immortality

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Resumé

Tato práce se zabývá zobrazením traumatu a jeho následného hojení v americké TV sérii

The Leftovers. Hlavními tvůrci tohoto úspěšného seriálu jsou především Tom Perrotta a

Damon Lindelof. Práce řeší všechny tři série, které byly na stanici HBO doposud odvysílány, a to v rozmezí od června 2014 až do června 2017. Tento seriál se setkal s rozporuplnými názory a má jak své milovníky, tak také odpůrce. Nejúspěšnější však byla první řada tohoto seriálu.

Diplomová práce je rozdělena do šesti kapitol, každá z nich je podpořená věcnými podkapitolami. První kapitola je úvodem do uváděné problematiky, druhá kapitola studuje jednotlivé druhy traumatu, spolu s následným zdoláváním problému.

Zbytek kapitol pak sleduje příběhy hlavních postav, z nichž si každá prochází určitým druhem traumatu. Cílem této práce je sledovat vývoj traumatu u jednotlivých postav s následným hodnocením jejich potíží a také procesu zotavování se. Oběti traumatu řeší, zda vůbec existuje nějaká možnost pro překonání této překážky a úplného uzdravení své duše. K lepšímu pochopení tématu mimo jiné přispívá také dílo Unclaimed experience od britské profesorky Cathy Caruth, dale pak poznámky švýcarského lékaře a psychoterapeuta Carla Gustava Junga, zabývající se mimo jiné výkladem snů. Analýza dospěla k závěru, že i přes mnohé překážky, kterými si hlavní protagonisté byli nuceni projít byli nakonec schopni čelit svým problémům a vyléčit své tělo i mysl.

Klíčová slova: Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers, trauma, hojení, stres,

Cathy Caruth, deprese, Postraumatická stresová porucha, náměsíčnost, nesmrtelnost

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