Leon Megginson once stated, “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive, but those who can best manage change”. Every human being has different characteristics. There are people who are adventurous, brave, sympathetic, caring, talkative, sociable, or spontaneous. There are many other characteristics that make everyone unique, and many researchers have tried to answer one question, “Which characteristics do humans need to survive in life-threatening circumstances?” Many texts prove that a positive mindset, motivation, and perseverance are the essential characteristics for humans to survive in the face of adversity. One characteristic that is essential for survival is a positive mindset. In his article “Deep Survival”, …show more content…
In Marie Colvin’s memorial speech for deceased war correspondents, “Truth at All Costs”, she says, “ Our mission is to speak the truth to power” (Colvin 89). As Colvin is also a war correspondent, she speaks from her personal experience of survival. She tells the readers her mission was to report and photograph wars for news. She then focuses her speech on correspondents who lost their lives, “Today we honour them as much as the front line journalists who have died in the pursuit of truth” (Colvin 90). Colvin had motivation, as all war correspondents do. Colvin was one of the lucky ones to live through her life-or-death experience. War correspondents all have the motivation to document the truth of wars to share with the citizens of a country. This helps by giving them a reason to not give …show more content…
In “Deep Survival”, Gonzales also has information on this characteristic as well. He states, “Searchers are always amazed to find people who died while in possession of everything they needed to survive” (Gonzales 327). Comparing this to the characteristic of a positive mindset, one must persevere through the difficulty of survival. The group of people Gonzales discussed had more supplies than other survivors have had, and yet they chose to give up. They didn’t focus on what they did have with them at the time being. Similarly, in Paul Rusesabagina’s personal story, he tells readers how he survived a genocide in his country. He also saved over 1,000 other lives as well by hiding them in the hotel he managed, Hotel Rwanda. Rusesabagina wrote, “I wandered today what exactly it was that allowed me to stop the killing clock for four hours” (Rusesabagina 81). When hiding his family and other strangers in his hotel, he had to convince militias to wait to kill them. He used perseverance to stay alive, which also helped many others stay
“The war correspondent is responsible for most of the ideas of battle which the public possesses … I can’t write that it occurred if I know that it did not, even if by painting it that way I can rouse the blood and make the pulse beat faster – and undoubtedly these men here deserve that people’s pulses shall beat for them. But War Correspondents have so habitually exaggerated the heroism of battles that people don’t realise that real actions are heroic.”
O'Brien, Tim. "How to Tell a True War Story." Writing as Re-Vision. Eds. Beth Alvarado and Barbara Cully. Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster Custom Publishing, 1996. 550-8.
In a particular instance a woman, Kathleen Cronan Wyosnick, wrote a very heartfelt letter to Abigail VanBuren [Abby] who was the first honorary member elected to the Korean War Veterans Association and previously a newspaper columnist. On November 11th, 1988, Wyosnick wrote to VanBuren pleading to consider a special group of men and women who fought in the Korean War, which is better known as the “forgotten war”. Wyosnick described in her letter how she was a former Air Force nurse who had lost her husband in the Korean War, and how the war is described in nothing more than a few paragraphs in text books. She said the only media reminder to the public of the war was a television show called “M*A*S*H”.
Survival skills can take over when in a life or death situation. The protagonist, Rainsford, in the short story “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell is a clear example of this. While on the way to hunting expedition Rainsford is thrown overboard his ship and swims to the nearby shore of Ship Trap Island. He explores the island and finds a chateau. He is invited in by the owner, General Zarroff, and they begin to converse. Here Rainsford learns something dark about this man that will lead to him being on the run for his life. He is forced to let his survival skills, resourcefulness, thinking on his feet, and his good eye, take center stage in the fight for his life.
...tories dedicated to many more heroes of “the greatest generation.” He mentions a man by the name of Jack Hemingway, who parachuted into France behind enemy lines, where he was taken prisoner by the Germans, and a woman named Helen Strauss, who was nominated as New Jersey’s Psychologist of the Year in 1997 for her hard work and dedication to children and low-income families. She was also known as a great woman for her service in the Navy. Brokaw also mentions Bill Mauldin, a writer who “shared with those on the front lines as well as those at home the hard truths and dark humor of life at war.”(p381) With Brokaw’s use of “hard truths,” again, the image of savage fighting appears to the reader. Another picture comes forth in the reader’s mind from Brokaw’s use of “dark humor.” A picture of a bleak and cloudy memories that the soldier’s mask with a sense of humor.
Anne Frank is a perfect example of perseverance. Raised as prey and caught in crossfire, she kept her guard up and made a life for herself. Trapped in the attic like a lost hoard of house mice, her and her makeshift family lived cramped together. While the other moped, she never lost sight of what she wanted, she never gave up hope. Anne could have given up, could
An image has the explicit power of telling a story without saying any words, that’s the power behind a photo. A photo tends to comes with many sides to a story, it has the ability to manipulate and tell something differently. There is a tendency in America, where explicit photos of war or anything gruesome occurring in the world are censored for the public view. This censorship hides the reality of our world. In “The War Photo No One Would Publish” Torie DeGhett centers her argument on censorship, detailing the account of graphic Gulf War photo the American press refused to publish. (73) DeGhett argues that the American public shouldn’t be restrained from viewing graphic content of the war occurring around the world. She believes that incomplete
O’Brien, Tim. “How to Tell a True War Story.” The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.
It is my view that in the story Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales that it demonstrates that in order to survive is to be selfish. One piece of
Survival is a necessity that individual needs to know and it needs to be done daily to ensure that humans are able to live on. There are many people in the world that are living well off, yet many people suffer from deadly diseases, food, and the impact from the war. In the following literature, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, The Kite Runner by Khald Hosseini, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, and “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant all show that survival is a key element. Survival is significant for us as human beings; it would is shown differently in the four literatures.
War Correspondents deserve a higher pay. Karl Merchant discusses this topic in “On The Front: The Life Of A War Correspondent.”
Gonzales, Laurence. Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why: True Stories of Miraculous Endurance and Sudden Death. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2003. Print.
Family and individual characteristics afford the ability to overcome hardship (Seccombe, 2016). If family provides a safe environment of open communication, acceptance and commitment to one another through good and bad times it is a strong support system (Seccombe, 2016). Equally, an individual with self confidence, intelligence, common sense, creativity and independence has the resources to be resilient (Seccombe,
Resilience; the word may seem foreign but it actually shines in some of the most difficult times. Resilience strikes courage into the heart of the most anxious person, and it makes the most difficult task turn into the easiest. Now, the question may be asked: if a difficult task, that seems impossible to overcome is presented, why might it seem so hard to be resilient? Well, although it may seem that resilience depends on the difficulty of the adversity, it depends on the strength of the person affected by the adversity and it’s their own choice they make whether they overcome it or not. In the articles How People Learn To Become Resilient, The Deafening Silence, 15 Common Defense Mechanisms, and Jericho, the contrast is show that while people
People don't truly accept life for what it is until they've actually tasted adversity and went through those misfortunes and suffering. We are put through many hardships in life, and we learn to understand and deal with those issues along the way. We find that life isn't just about finding one's self, but about creating and learning from our experiences and background. Adversity shapes what we are and who we become as individuals. Yann Martel's Life of Pi shows us that adverse situations help shape a person's identity and play a significant role in one's lief by determining one's capabilities and potential, shaping one's beliefs and values, and defining the importance and meaning of one's self.