Caraval

Though Garber never explicitly labels the sisters’ familial experiences as traumatic, she showcases the effects of trauma on their personalities, decisions, and fears. Both Scarlett and Tella have been physically and mentally abused by their father. They have also endured the trauma of being abandoned by their mother. Scarlett has the added trauma of knowing her father is capable of murder and witnessing a man’s death. Tella has the layer of trauma related to the fact that she knows her life isn’t worth all that much to her father and that he’ll abuse her however much he needs to in order to control Scarlett. These traumatic experiences have impacted them in significant ways that shape the novel’s trajectory and the sisters’ character arcs.

Since Scarlett bears the horrible secret of Felipe’s murder and feels responsible for her sister’s life, she behaves much more prudently. As a child before these traumas occurred, she fantasizes about magic and Caraval like a typical child, but as a young adult, she has been forced to squash her dreams under her fear. She has to be practical, careful, and safe in order to keep Tella safe. After all, her father threatens her that “if anything gets in the way of [her wedding], more than [her] sister’s face will bleed” (24). Therefore, her one goal at the beginning of the novel is to marry her fiancé to please her father. She clutches onto the belief that her fiancé will shelter her and Tella from harm because it is the only shred of hope she has after being so broken down by her father’s boundless cruelty. Had Scarlett not endured such trauma, she may be more willing to rebel against her arranged marriage or ask questions about the secrecy of her fiancé’s identity, but it’s almost as though she doesn’t really want to know who he is in case he isn’t who he seems to be in his letters. Only when she loses Tella and stands up to her father can she break free of the prison of her trauma.

Though Tella has experienced similar trauma, her role in it is different, which gives her a different outlook and approach to coping with it. In her father’s eyes, she’s dispensable, and because of that, she has a more carefree approach to life: taking risks, kissing boys, and enjoying whatever she can while she can.

She recognizes Scarlett’s love for her and how limiting Scarlett’s fear is, so her response to trauma is to take the ultimate risk. She is willing to die if it means setting her sister free. She believes her sister’s love is strong enough to bring her back because after all, she is willing to marry a man she’s never met who could potentially be just as bad as their father or worse to help Tella escape her father.

Since Tella’s only path forward appears to be a dead-end, she invents a new path for herself by writing to Master Legend that “My father is a villain, though not the dashing sort like you. He’s the kind who likes to beat his daughters” and offers a proposition to play “a very interesting game” (362-63). Tella is free to rebel because her life is the one at stake, and she cares about Scarlett’s future. Her trauma has taught her to be cunning and manipulate her audience. She flatters Master Legend by calling him “dashing” and appeals to his love of his games to convince him to help her put on this elaborate game for her sister.

Both sisters are protective of one another as a result of their trauma, but the way they protect each other looks fundamentally different because of how their trauma manifested. Their father, too, has experienced some degree of trauma in losing his wife, Paloma, so suddenly. Though Garber doesn’t share the specifics of what happened, she makes it clear this event is a marker of change in Governor Dragna’s character: When the Dragna parents were together, they were a functional family unit, but when Paloma disappeared, Governor Dragna lost his mind and became abusive toward his daughters. The novel shows that the same traumatic events can impact individual members of a family differently, and how a person responds to trauma largely depends on their role in and perception of it.