Resilience In The Road Analysis

Resilience is displayed through the drive shown by the characters in these stories, despite hardships or trauma in their pasts. In The Road, Papa and the boy continue to move forward and “carry the fire”, staying morally true to themselves, even despite the things they had seen. The boy’s mother shot herself, he has seen cannibalism, slavery, and people reduced to monsters and broken shells of humanity, but he is still fighting and trying to be one of the good guys. He still wants to help the little boy when he meets him, still wants to help Ely when he meets them (McCarty, 162); The Boy still has a desire to help people who are suffering. He is starving, but he wants to give away his food so that the people who are good in this world won’t die.

Despite his love for women and occasional penchant for violence, Yossarian has a moral code he lives by, trying to tell Aarfy “You can’t take the life of another human being and get away with it, even if she is just a poor little servant girl. Don’t you see?” (418). Yossarian keeps moving forward, hoping for people to stop dying and to just live peacefully. In the film Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie continued to search for friends and hope to find a place in high school, even with the problems he knows he had. His friend’s suicide and his aunt’s sexual assault and subsequent death flash before his eyes daily, a reminder of who he loved and lost. He is still willing to try to love again, finding Sam and Patrick. Charlie still refuses to refer to Patrick as ‘Nothing’, gives his friends kind, thoughtful gifts for at Christmas, refuses to hurt Mary Elizabeth’s feelings, and defends his friends in the cafeteria fight. Despite how much he has been hurt, Charlie is unwilling to hurt others, and hopes that he will be able to find people who feel the