A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 16
This is the fifth year in a row I’ve run this series in April.
Today: What is it like to be the lone survivor of a catastrophe?
I’m sure most of you remember the horrible tragedy of the Yarnell Hill fire which overran and killed 19 Arizona firefighters on June 30, 2013. Those firefighters were part of a proud group of men and women known as the Arizona Hotshots. Turns out, one of that group survived: Only Surviving Arizona Hotshot Firefighter Was The Team’s Lookout.
PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) — The lone survivor on an elite Arizona firefighting crew was serving as a lookout and relaying key information to his colleagues when a raging wildfire trapped and killed them, officials said Tuesday.
Brendan McDonough, 21, was in his third season with the 20-member, Prescott-based Granite Mountain Hotshots.
He was assigned to be a “heads-up on the hillside” for the team on that fateful afternoon two days ago, said Wade Ward, a Prescott Fire Department spokesman who relayed McDonough’s story at an afternoon news conference.
Ward said McDonough “did exactly what he was supposed to” when conditions changed as his team fought the mountain blaze near the town of Yarnell, about 80 miles northwest of Phoenix.
He notified the other Hotshots that the weather was changing rapidly and told them the fire had switched direction because of the wind. He also told them he was leaving the area and to contact him on the radio if they needed anything, Ward said.
Here is a short documentary about the event including comments from McDonough:
What caught my attention about this story was the survivor. I imagined myself in a similar circumstance where I had somehow managed to live while my peers had perished. How would I make sense of that? How could I make sense of that? How would it affect my life? How would it affect the local community? There would be everything in my life. Then everything in my life after the tragedy. I can see how it might give a person a bifurcated sense of self, who I am now compared to who I was back then.
Then there’s this: survivor’s guilt. One definition I found: “A mental condition that occurs when a person perceives themselves to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not.”
Even if logic dictates I may have done everything right, my feelings tell me I have done something wrong.
In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy meets with Red one last time before he decides to act on his long-planned escape. During that conversation, Andy says this:
ANDY
My wife used to say I’m a hard man
to know. Like a closed book.
Complained about it all the time.
(pause)
She was beautiful. I loved her. But
I guess I couldn’t show it enough.
(softly)
I killed her, Red.
Andy finally glances to Red, seeking a reaction. Silence.
ANDY
I didn’t pull the trigger. But I
drove her away. That’s why she
died. Because of me, the way I am.
This moment is very much like confession in the Catholic church, Andy finally admitting a truth with which he’s lived for years: He feels guilty about the death of his wife and his own survival.
In The Silence of the Lambs, when Lecter compels Clarice finally to share her deepest secrets to him — again much like a confessional with Lecter serving as the priest — she talks about witnessing the spring slaughter of the lambs on her uncle’s farm and how she reacted:
CLARICE
I took one lamb. And I ran away, as
fast as I could...IN FLASHBACKa vast Montana plain, and crossing this, a tiny figure - the
little Clarice, holding a lamb in her arms.DR. LECTER (V.O.)
Where were you going?CLARICE (V.O.)
I don't know. I had no food or water.
It was very cold. I thought - if I
can even save just one... but he got
so heavy. So heavy...The tiny figure stops, and after a few moments sinks to the
ground, hunched over in despair.
Of course, the lamb represents her father, thus we see that she suffers from survivor guilt: If only she could have done something to save her father’s life. It’s totally illogical, of course, Clarice was only eleven years old when he died as he attempted to stop a robbery. But sometimes guilt does not dwell in the realm of logic, it resides somewhere deeper in our psyche. Lecter recognizes this. He asks Clarice, “What happened to your lamb?” Her response: “They killed him.” On some level, we can take this to mean her father, which is why Lecter says the following to sum up Clarice’s confession:
DR. LECTER
You think if you can save poor
Catherine, you could make them stop,
don't you? You think if Catherine
lives, you won't wake up in the dark
ever again to that awful screaming
of the lambs.
Here is that amazing scene:
We are talking two profoundly great movies: The Shawshank Redemption and The Silence of the Lambs, and both Protagonists suffer from survivor’s guilt.
Thus where this process leads me is to start with the idea of a survivor. Someone who does not feel right or good about that fact.
What could that situation be? What could that tragedy have been? What event can the universe bring his/her way to jolt them out of their state of Disunity and compel them into a journey where they have to confront their deepest fears, likely tied to their guilt, and see where that takes them? If it’s an uplifting story, perhaps like Andy and Clarice, they do something redemptive. If it’s a tragedy heaped on a tragedy, we are looking at the study of a character’s dissolution and disintegration. Or perhaps a salvific tragedy where the character dies in order to save someone else.
I just know this: This is a complex psychological arena, one from which a compelling Protagonist can emerge.
There you go: My sixteenth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!
What would you do with it?
Each day this month, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Gender bend, genre bend, what if. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.
See you in comments (hit Reply to join the conversation). And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.
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