The Ethics of Testimony in Ana María Matute’s La trampa

Ana María Matute, who experienced the civil war in her childhood, is a female writer of "the generation of the 50s". The Spanish Civil War left an indelible scar on Matute's life, and the trauma of the civil war is represented in various ways throughout the world of her works. In this study, we focus on the property of trauma, which possesses a contradictory duality of destruction and survival, and examine the ethics of testimony in the novel La trampa. After examining the property of trauma as the origin of life and death, we will illuminate the positive meaning of silence. We will analyze the testimony patterns and implications of internal testifier, external testifier, and potential testifier. Through this, we aim to present the possibility of mutual solidarity and intergenerational communication by listening to the cries arising from the trauma of others, although trauma, which cannot be immediately understood, does not rely on complete knowledge, but rather on the act of listening to the cries emanating from the trauma of others.