Examples Of Resilience In Farewell To Manzanar

Gavin Chavez
Roseberry
Period 7
March 31, 2023
Finding Light through Resilience
Resilience is defined as the capability to withstand and survive from difficulties, and it is a necessary trait for anyone in the midst of abuse or persecution. Many people have had to focus on sturdiness alone during times of great persecution spread across many people. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author paints a vivid picture of how one boy survived the abuse of WWII through simple moments of joy and finding light in the darkness after the terrible selection process in the various camps. In the novel Farewell to Manzanar by James D. Houston and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, the authors make sure to capture the horrific nature of WWII

All three of the selected texts show “Finding Light in the Darkness” through Elie’s happiness after selection, the mother’s charity and sense of community, and the banding together of the captured POWs in the Japanese camp.
The happiness after the selection process, the mother giving back to the community in the darkest of times, and the POWs camaraderie in the Japanese camp all show “Finding Light in the Darkness” in their respective novels. In the novel “Night” by Eli Wiesel, the Jews of the concentration camps show willpower in the face of their mistreatment by focusing only on keeping themselves alive in the harrowing selection, and show great happiness after the fact that they survive. During the selection events where prisoners would either be killed or spared, Eli Wiesel was terrified of being killed and separated from his father, so when it was his turn for selection, very resiliently, “[he] ran without looking back”(Night 72). When Eli “ran without looking back” he shows great firmness that is needed for a survivor

This shows great toughness on his part because he made it through one of the most stressful high-mortality-rate, events in a concentration camp, to see his father once again. Similarly, The novel Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston addresses the theme of sturdiness in the face of their ill-treatment when the narrator and her family continue to be resilient, even in the darkest times of persecution. Fearing for her family, the narrator’s mother forces her family's and community’s survival in the darkest of times by “…quickly [subordinating] her own desires to those of the family or the community, because [that] was the only way to survive,” (Farewell To Manzanar 28). Though the narrator’s mother is in the same terrible conditions as everybody else in Manzanar, she still gives up “her own desires to those of the family or the community,” because she needs everybody to survive. This is an example of resolve in the face of oppression because it proves that the mother is resilient due to the fact that she not only keeps herself alive, but her whole surrounding community in the cruel Manzanar conditions. This