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Overcoming Adversity In 'Little Brother, Mother To Son'

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Overcoming adversity is a fundamental aspect of human nature, and it requires a lot of resilience. Throughout history, individuals and communities have faced various challenges and obstacles, ranging from natural disasters to social injustices. However, it is the ability to overcome these adversities with a strong and resilient mindset that defines us as individuals and as a society. The three literary works, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, and an excerpt from Trevor Noah’s book Born A Crime, all explore the theme of resilience and the ability to overcome adversity, which can be applied to our daily lives. Each work depicts characters who face challenges and obstacles but refuse to give up and instead use …show more content…

Despite the odds stacked against him, Marcus refuses to give up and fights back against the oppressive government. He uses his skills as a hacker to organise a resistance movement and ultimately succeeds in bringing down the government’s surveillance system. As Marcus states, “I saw a problem, and I fixed it. That’s what being a hacker is all about” (Doctorow 348). This quote highlights Marcus’s resilience and determination to fight against the injustice he faced. Overall, we can use this mindset to understand that when wrong happens, we must fight against it, not turn a blind eye. Similarly, in “Mother to Son,” Hughes uses the metaphor of a staircase to illustrate the difficult journey of life. The mother encourages her son to keep climbing the stairs, despite the obstacles he may face. As the mother states, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (Hughes line 2). This quote highlights the mother’s resilience and her ability to overcome the challenges she has faced in her own life. By sharing her experiences with her son, she is instilling in him the strength and resilience needed to overcome adversity, and this gives the reader advice to get through their problems as …show more content…

Despite her son’s protests, his mother refuses to let him bring his friends from the hood into their home. Noah describes his mother’s feelings towards his friends, stating, “If I brought them back to the house, she didn’t even want them coming inside. ‘I don’t like those boys,’ she’d say” (Noah 25). This quote highlights his mother’s determination to protect her son from negative influences, stand by her beliefs, and protect him from the dangers of the hood. She recognises the consequences that come with associating with the wrong crowd and refuses to let her son fall victim to them, which is a life lesson all readers can take from her character and the

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She then says that all he has to do is give his “attention, diligence and steady nature” because it’s is “expected” that he succeeds. He has “superior advantages “ because his father is there with him really just painting him a picture that nothing is against him. She then says he's as smart as Cicero then says ‘habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties”. Not only is she instilling self-esteem in her son but proving her point by comparing him to a “genius” and telling him that difficulties are expected but it will only make him smarter. She then reminds him what his country has faced by mentioning “war, tyranny”, calling him to arms as well as setting a patriotic tone.

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This passage demonstrates the trouble that the author Wes Moore’s family and their friends go through to help send him to military school. Once Wes makes his first attempt at escaping from Valley Forge Military Academy he contacts his mother in an attempt to come home, she then divulged all the sacrifices she’d been making to send him there and steer his life in a better direction. From this, the author hopes to show that people who are supported throughout their lives have a greater chance of success in the future if they strive to reach goals that they set for themselves. The first two paragraphs of this passage show how determined Wes’ mother was to help him change his life.

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In the novel The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, resilience is a crucial element in the fight against oppression, this is shown when characters encounter emotional and sexual abuse and when they need assistance finding hope when navigating through grief. To sum it all up, It isit is irrefutable that the resilience of characters in The Marrow Thieves is superbly summarized in a quote by Robert Jordan when he says “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.”. One must remember that life is full of hardships and that there will be easy and challenging times, but the only good choice is to stay resilient through it

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