Exploring Resilience in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere

Abstract

People are exposed to trauma at some point in their life. They tend to express several outcomes according to their personality, surroundings, and circumstances. The psychopathological conditions of trauma have been in the limelight so far. Cynosure of the psychological impairments of trauma normalizes that people only suffer in the aftermath of trauma. In recent decades the unidimensional psychopathological focus of trauma has shifted into multidimensional focus on the outcomes of trauma. Many people overcome the loss and adversities of life without being engulfed by grief and sorrow. They can move on and resume their life with some minor psychological disruptions. Being resilient to trauma is common and not found only in exceptionally healthy people. This paper aims to bring out the salutogenic concept of resilience in literature and analyses how the female protagonist called Door managed to preserve her physical and mental health even in the time of bereavement and the life-threatening situations of her life in Neil Gaiman’s magical realism novel Neverwhere. People are exposed to trauma at some point in their life. They tend to express several outcomes according to their personality, surroundings, and circumstances. The psychopathological conditions of trauma have been in the limelight so far. Cynosure of the psychological impairments of trauma normalizes that people only suffer in the aftermath of trauma. In recent decades the unidimensional psychopathological focus of trauma has shifted into multidimensional focus on the outcomes of trauma. Many people overcome the loss and adversities of life without being engulfed by grief and sorrow. They can move on and resume their life with some minor psychological disruptions. Being resilient to trauma is common and not found only in exceptionally healthy people. This paper aims to bring out the salutogenic concept of resilience in literature and analyses how the female protagonist called Door managed to preserve her physical and mental health even in the time of bereavement and the life-threatening situations of her life in Neil Gaiman’s magical realism novel Neverwhere.