ABSTRACT
The threat of physical violence, however, pales in comparison to the collective trauma that Hard Rock engenders when he goes to the adjacent mental hospital and returns lobotomized. Trauma is born of institutionalized isolation and secrecy, especially when built into the system of punishment is the idea that the abuse and deprivation taking place within the confines of those prison walls is ultimately preferable to, and more humane than, the death and torture of a previous time. ‘A still mauled, but constructive new life’ is a sentence that not only radiates with beauty and wisdom but also alludes to the aftereffects of trauma. It provides proof of how its articulation through story or art can lead to eventual therapeutic release, but that some remnant of the wound will remain. The poor conditions that are almost universal to the American prison system inflicts deeper psychological trauma, even than seeing two men fight.
