Resilience and Refuge in Sonia Deryangala’s Wave

Abstract

Resilience is psychological and biological strengths which humans use to master change successfully (Flach, 2002).  It can be defined as positive capacity of people to cope with disappointments, stress and catastrophe. (Patterson and Kelleher (2005) state that thriving is largely determined by person’s resilience capacity. Transmuting traumatic experiences have been a central theme in centuries of literature, poetry, and personal narratives.  One such memoir is Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave which unfolds harrowing saga of her life after tsunami of December 26th, 2004.  First-person narrative is the recollection of bitter memories when her family stays in a hotel on the seacoast of Yala, Colombo. She is psychologically disturbed by sudden disappearance of all members of her family just a day after Christmas celebrations.  She finds it difficult to compromise with the tragic disaster and starts to live in her memories. Surprisingly, she does not surrender herself to chaos as she develops strength through her resilience. She bounces back pain of loss through her recollections. She has good memory power which makes her recollect incident of disaster very often with minute details. She tries to remember deliberately to endure the pain and does not wish to be consoled by anybody. Her inner strength is very similar to Janet  (2014) ‘resilience’ which is defined as the ability to bounce back from adversity, frustration, and misfortune and withstand hardship. Present paper makes an attempt to understand how author shares her real life experiences in facing challenges  of life and develops resilience to face personal crises.