Resilience Stories

1) A resilience story is an experience that the character(s) meets the unprecedented challenge in life and arouses personal potentials in the face of adversity. As a genre, a resilience story contains some specific elements as conventions, such as disaster, despair, perseverance, courage, adaptability, hope, and so on. Among these conventions, I value hope most, since hope relieves the mental crisis of the character(s), which serves as a foundation of the positive response to the plight. For example, when Manyang struggled on the edge of life and death, he insisted on the “tiniest thread of hope” that his parents would magically come to him and take him home. Besides this particular hope that kept him alive, the saying at the refugee camps “The rain will stop and you will stand in the sunlight” represented hope as well and helped him get through. Similarly, according to O'Brien, she emphasizes the function of hope in resilience story by claiming that “in the course of gaining scientific rigor, resilience has not lost its popular appeal as the anchoring idea of a powerful story in which moralism and hope combine to produce a successful outcome.” Based on her analysis of the novel The Radiance of Tomorrow, despite the pitiful ending caused by the reconstruction of a mine controlled by corrupt corporate and officials, “the establishment of a new school” has cultivated and solidified “hope for the future” of the villagers. Many books and films considered as resilient stories highlight the role of hope. Some famous lines from them have motivated and mobilized the resilience within the audience, such as “Tomorrow is another day “by Scarlett in the novel Gone with the Wind, or “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies” by Andy in the film Shawshank Redemption. 2) In “Resilience Stories: Narratives of Adaptation, Refusal, and Compromise,” Susie O’Brien explains, “In authors ranging from Charles Dickens to Victor Hugo, he traces the recurrence of narratives focused on characters’— generally children’s— transformation through adversity. In each of these examples, “after much suffering, [the children] moved up in the world by dint of hard work, merit, and honesty, achieving good positions and whatever happiness, comfort, and respect one could ask for in this world.” The characters in the resilience stories have the capacity to overcome the adverse experiences in their lives. Adversity does not doom the characters but they make them stronger. Moreover, resilience makes it possible to handle uncertainties in life. In Gharib's graphic story, Manyang depicts resilience for he does not give up on his life after the snake bite. His determination to survive after the bite pushes him to keep struggling for his survival. Had he given hope before he was taken to the hospital, his chance of coming out alive would have diminished.

In terms of conventions, the resilience genre should incorporate characters that are determined in their quests. The external factors which impact the resilience should be incorporated in the genres too. Limitations of resilience should be acknowledged so that resilience should not be recommended in contexts where it is inapplicable...foundations of resilience or the methods which can be used to bolster it in an individual should be clearly defined. I consider Saroo Brierley’s “A Long Way Home” a story of resilience. He is lost as child and gets adopted by an Australian family who bring him up. Throughout his stay in Australia he anticipates that someday he will reunite with his family. His dream comes true many years later when he meets the lost biological family. Although he struggles with his displacement, he does not lose hope of ever tracing his home and biological family. He endures ‘ the long way home’ due to innate resilience. 3) Reading this article and the comic, I find that most events can be spun into resilience stories based on the fact that they are how people overcome major events in their lives. In O'Brien's article, he talks about true stories and fictional examples, but seems to combine them with having their meanings of resilience be similar, yet different. While the UN stories have a more general and bright outlook on resilience, "technology, knowledge translation, and willingness to change produce the desired outcome of self-sufficiency" (O'Brien pgs. 47-48), the other story he talks about, being The Radiance of Tomorrow, gives more of a specific and saddening opinion. The story tells of how, in O'Brien's words, eroded their capacity to thrive; their resilience- and with it, the vision of their future prospects- is compromised" (O'Brien pg. 60). Both stories are told as how people overcome the major adversity in their lives, and while the UN story succeeds in doing so, the characters in The Radiance of Tomorrow fail, and are left even more devastated than they were after the initial fallout. While the UN story gives an affect of, 'even through the darkest times, people can and will be resilient enough to adapt and change for the better', Beah's book shows that sometimes resilience fails, and that life can get worse if that happens. Gharib's comic struck me as a very moving piece of literature, not only because of the story told in it, but because of the words in it that perfectly told me what his idea of resilience was, "The rain will stop and eventually you will see the sunlight". This pandemic is the longest rainstorm that I've ever experienced, and even though I don't know when it will end, if I keep being resilient, one day I will see the sun again." This feeling of powerlessness that I have right now because I can't do more to help the situation besides staying inside isn't the best feeling, but Gharib also has something to say about that, "...but like the rain, those moments will pass". I will get my power back, if I'm resilient enough to power through the storm in search of sunlight. As for what pieces of media that I find resilience stories, I consider "Fullmetal Alchemist" to be one. The main characters, Edward and Alphonse, have to go through a lot of trials in order to reclaim parts of their bodies they lost while doing forbidden alchemy, and yet they never gave up. Another piece of media that I think counts as a resilience story is any Spider-man origin story. Peter Parker has to adapt to his uncle's death as well as having superpowers he knows almost nothing about, but he learns from these experiences and becomes a better person and a hero in spite of them.