SOUVENIR ET MEMOIRE, PROCESSUS DE RESILIENCE FACE A LA DETENTIONMEMORIES, A PROCESS OF RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF CAPTIVITY

Abstract

Resilience is the ability to withstand adversity, trauma, stress, and other problems such as depression, family problems and difficult situations in order to be able to survive regardless of the types of shocks suffered. In his novel, Tous les hommes n’habitent pas le monde de la même façon (All men do not inhabit the world in the same way), the French writer Jean-Paul Dubois (Goncourt price-2019) narrates the story of Paul Hansen, locked down in Montreal prison where he shares a 6 square meters cell with Patrick Horton, convicted for murder. Paul Hansen passes time recalling the greatest moments of his life and conversing with ghosts from his past. Remembering the past in this way, helps him to resist and to become more resilient. He escapes his present to fantasize a world where he travels from Toulouse to the North of Denmark, to Skagen, passing through the North of Canada. But how does the narrator explain Paul Hansen's resilience? How memory become imperative does to escape one's present? How do memories become a self-healing tool? This paper will explore the possible answers to these questions as depicted in the novel.