Resilience Through Religion, Education, and Humor Theme Analysis

Throughout his difficult childhood, Noah and his mother, Patricia, cope with their uncertainty, relative poverty, and fear of the violence surrounding them by using three important tools to manage their relationship to the future: religion, education, and humor. Noah’s mother, in particular, views her future and fate as instruments of God’s will; she dedicates countless hours to prayer in order to gain the sense of control and certainty that she otherwise lacks in her life. But she also encourages her son to educate himself and build his own future, just as she did for herself—not necessarily by staying in school as long as possible, but rather by thinking critically about the conditions that surround them rather than taking their assigned place in the world for granted. And finally, the two connect through humor, which allows them to name and confront their suffering while maintaining a broader, more optimistic (but still realistic) view of their lives as a whole. These three tools all help them overcome pain by understanding it from a new perspective that keeps a better future in view.

Religion is an essential source of solace and meaning for Noah’s mother and, as he notes, many other colonized peoples around the world; it allows them to sustain hope in the face of their extraordinary oppression but also lets them concretely advance in the colonial society by following the colonizers’ customs. Noah’s mother is a devout Christian; she takes the family to three churches every Sunday, which last all day, and seems to believe that the more church she goes to, the more blessings she will get and the more likely she will be to have her prayers answered. At the very end of the book, they are: she prays fervently when Abel tries to murder her, and his gun mysteriously misfires four times, which the police are never ultimately able to understand or explain. On the one hand, it clearly looks like Patricia’s prayers are saving her life; on the other hand, Noah wonders why his mother must suffer so immensely in the first place despite her piety. And Noah’s extended family in Soweto always values his participation in prayer circles because he speaks English and “everyone knows” that God pays more attention to prayers in English. This points to both the way the family stays optimistic about their futures and the way that they seem to gain advantages by selectively emulating the colonizers who brought Christianity to South Africa in the first place.

Noah and his mother also use education to broaden their senses of possibility—to imagine the better lives they want and set their minds to pursuing and improving their chances at a job. This is not just formal education, but (even more importantly) the ability to think critically, which Patricia instills in Noah from an early age. Patricia “spoke to [Noah] like an adult” and teaches him English, gives him books (especially fantasy, which stretches his imagination) and shows him “places black people never went” so that “he will know that the ghetto is not the world.” Through his mother’s insistence on questioning rules and systems of power, Noah learns to think for himself rather than follow received wisdom about his prospects as a poor South African.  Like white children, he learns “that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered.” Likewise, Patricia’s own success is largely due to her schooling: because she managed to learn English in a mission school and pursue specialized job training, she could get the job as a secretary that allowed her to raise her children on her own.

Besides religion and education, humor plays an central role in Noah’s approach to life and suffering. Although he scarcely discusses his comedy career in this memoir, his writing itself shows how humor can not only deflect and dull pain, but also—and more crucially—help people maintain a sense of realistic resilience in the face of obstacles. Noah’s tone is tongue-in-cheek throughout the book, especially when it comes to describing the particular cultural quirks of his family or South Africa in general. While he and his family clearly suffer, he by no means views his situation as tragic. He particularly shares this sense of humor with his mother—most notably, they argue through jokes most Sunday mornings about whether Jesus really wants them to go to church (and three churches, at that). For Noah, this is as much a way of coping with the exhausting commute to church as a means of emphasizing that the benefits of devotion are psychological, fundamentally about its ability to change people’s perspective, regardless of whether they pray from home or church. The book’s closing moment shows Patricia’s remarkable strength and optimism through her humor. Her ex-husband Abel has just shot her in the head and nearly killed her, but she survives; when Noah visits her the second day in the hospital, she tells him to “look on the bright side,” which is that “now you’re officially the best-looking person in the family.” They laugh despite their horrible circumstances, suggesting that their resilience is their greatest asset.

After he recalls burning down a white family’s home as a child, Noah insists that he would not be himself without the ability to feel pain but not let it interfere with continuing to try new things and pursue his goals. In a word, this is the resilience he shares with his mother: both are well attuned to the arbitrary injustices of the world and neither represses their pain, but both have their techniques for going on in the face of pain, rather than resigning themselves to never improving their lot in life. Whether or not prayers are answered, fantasies come true, or jokes turn into a successful comedy career, Noah shows that these are all techniques for achieving resilience by creating perspective.