Tracing the trajectory from struggle to survival: a study on the narratives by female survivors of cancer

Abstract

The illness of cancer brings in unbearable suffering for individuals, and hence there is an urgent necessity to observe, to analyse and to learn from the struggle of cancer survivors. Cancer narratives detail these struggles and delineate the processes of survival adapted by the survivors. Further, these narratives portray the personal, social, and psychological experiences of the cancer patients from the time of their being diagnosed with cancer. The research traces the survival trajectory in a selection of cancer narratives by female survivors from the Indian subcontinent. The four primary texts taken for analysis come under the genre of illness narratives: Anita Moorjani’s Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing (2012), Neelam Kumar’s To Cancer with Love: My Journey of Life (2015), Manisha Koirala’s (with Neelam Kumar) Healed: How Cancer Gave Me a New Life (2018) and Lisa Ray’s Close to the Bone (2019) are analytically reviewed for the study. Theoretical perspectives from the survivorship theory of Alex Broom and Katherine Kenny, from the Resilience theories of Ann S. Masten and Michael Ungar, and from the Posttraumatic Growth theory of Richard Tedeschi et al. have formed a framework to analyse the trajectory of survival in this research. The study surveys the illness journey in literature, taking note of the growth of illness narratives since the 1950s, and focuses on the cancer narratives of the 21 st century. It also concentrates on the psychological and social aspects of cancer survivorship, resilience, growth and transformation. The thesis brings forth the observations of survivorship as subjective, relational and innovative. It identifies survival as an uncertain, evolving, continuous living experience and also as a social practice. The study recognises how survivorship is represented through literary devices and recognises writing as a healing process. The narrative structures of the texts are analysed using theoretical observations of Arthur W. Frank as described in The Wounded Storyteller (1997). The pathographies of Anne Hunsaker Hawkins have helped to identify the transformative nature of the narratives. The survival strategies describe the process of survival from the point of diagnosis through adverse situations during the treatment to reach the point of recognition that survival leads to regeneration. The narratives studied reveal how continuous resilience with hope and confidence may have aided in the survival of the self and the body. The study also identifies various adaptive techniques employed to frame the survival pathways. The survivors organise their chaotic survival experiences to form a structure to overcome trauma and bring out a controlled perception of life. It results in reconstituting the self from the past and establishing a better version of the past self. Thus, survival is not a process of returning to the former condition but a step more; it is a realisation of the need to survive followed by a new perspective of living, both socially and psychologically, employing inventiveness and resourcefulness. Cancer survival is therefore identified as a continuous process of growth and transformation. The individual and her external environment come into cordial coordination, making cancer survival not just an individual struggle but a collective regeneration. The survivor's self and everything connected to it are reconstructed anew. Survival transforms the thought formations of the survivor’s mind by bringing in previously unseen perspectives and ultimately results in an improvement in the quality of life experienced by the survivor.