This paper sets out to get to grips with how one of the foremost postliberation South African writers, i.e. Zakes Mda, grapples in his fiction with two glaring societal features of the rainbow nation: mourning and resilience. Ways of Dying on which this research article is based is, doubtless, a reproach on democratic era South Africa. The author resorts to the pervasiveness of violence and its attendant string of deaths as a stepping stone to lay bare his gut-feeling that his country is, sad to say, continuously in mourning. On the flip side, Mda makes the contention that, for all its woes pertaining to crime and deprivation of any ilk, South African society is conspicuous by a mind-blowing bend for resiliency. Arguably, Mda’s Ways of Dying represents a cautionary tale about the mind-boggling intricacies of the work of mourning and the driving necessity for a sense of bouncebackability in hostile world.
Keywords: Decathexis, Mourning, Plastic Force, Resilience, Trauma Loss Withdrawal
