“Reading Under Siege: Literary Community and Wartime Memory in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”

Seminar Paper Title:

“Stories as Survival: Literary Community, Trauma, and Resistance in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”

I. Introduction: Literature as Lifeline in a Time of War

• Contextual overview: Briefly introduce The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and its historical backdrop—the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II.
• Thesis statement (needs rewriting):
  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society presents reading and storytelling not merely as pastimes but as essential acts of emotional survival and subtle resistance. Through its epistolary form and portrayal of a literary community under occupation, the novel explores how literature becomes a medium through which trauma is processed, memory is preserved, and human agency is reclaimed.

II. Development

A. Trauma and the Fragmented Voice: Literature as Emotional Refuge

• Explore the psychological impact of occupation on characters: Elizabeth McKenna’s fate, Amelia’s grief, Dawsey’s reticence, Remy’s recovery.
• The epistolary form and indirect narration: Traumatic memories are filtered through letters, often through retellings and emotional detours—mimicking how trauma resists linear narration.
• The function of storytelling: Reading Dickens, Brontë, and Lamb becomes a structured emotional outlet in the face of uncertainty, starvation, and violence.

B. Literature as Resistance: Intellectual and Spiritual Defiance

• The formation of the literary society as an act of rebellion: How the society began as a ruse and became a genuine assertion of cultural dignity.
• Literary discussions as subversion: The occupation limits movement and speech, but books offer intellectual freedom and preserve individual thought.
• Examples from the novel: Reading Wilde and Seneca as coded critiques of authoritarianism; literary meetings as safe spaces of solidarity.

C. Collective Memory and Healing: Rebuilding Through Shared Narratives

• Post-war storytelling: Letters become a way to piece together what happened, forming a collective narrative and identity for the islanders.
• Juliet’s role as archivist and listener: She collects their stories, becoming a medium through which memory is preserved and trauma articulated.
• Remy and the ethics of memory: Her arrival introduces Holocaust trauma into the narrative; the community’s response models care and narrative inclusion.

III. Conclusion: The Enduring Power of Literature in the Face of Violence

• Synthesis: Reading and storytelling in Guernsey serve not only as tools of individual survival but as mechanisms for rebuilding trust, community, and identity in a post-traumatic society.
• Implications: The novel suggests that in the face of totalitarian violence, literature preserves human complexity and resilience.
• Closing thought: By grounding trauma in shared literary experience, the novel celebrates the enduring human capacity to find meaning, connection, and resistance through the written word.

SOURCES:

Barrows, Annie, and Mary Ann Shaffer. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Bloomsbury, 2008.

SPECIFICATIONS: