Quest Narrative Analysis

For my mom, when the doctors told her she was cured, it was the end of her physical suffering with breast cancer, but the battle with breast cancer has not ended. The ending experience of her physical pain, and the removal of the tumour itself is what Frank calls the restitution narrative. Specifically, he describes this narrative as when the individual’s physical body returns back to its initial healthy state (Frank 2013, 90). Despite her pain suffering ending, her battle with societal expectations, and an established culture of cancer has not. I use Frank’s quest narrative as a way of demonstrating society’s expectation of a cancer survivor having a quest narrative after coming out alive, and the impacts of these standards. Frank describes

In this framing of such an experience, limits the ability for an individual to see themselves for who they want to be, or truly are. In other words, to me, my mom is a beautiful, strong, brave, and independent woman. Whereas, to others, they see her only in the context of her physical appearance which is an image of her suffering when she had cancer. It seems as if my mom’s physical body is stuck in the chaos narrative, and to others, this is unusual to them since they expect her to act as if she is going through a quest narrative. This puts a lot of pressure on individuals like my mom, to conform to this cancer culture. From this, we might also ask the question of what has influenced this cancer culture that has been demonstrated through my mom’s experience, Perusek’s brother, and perhaps others, as it is evidently dominant in society. In Cancer, Culture, and Individual Experience: Public Discourse and Personal Affliction, Perusek, demonstrates in the following quotation that one of the main influencers in permitting these expectations is the role of talk and