Cancer Is Like This (Part 1): An American Tale

Americans have a love affair with “self-made” success stories. The story you tell yourself about life affects the way you make sense of the cancer ordeal.

DATE 2025

(6-minute read)

Keywords: cancer, Rocky, triumph, metaphors, American myth, melodrama

After hearing from some folks who read my last blog post, I thought to pursue a little further the “menus of metaphors” idea, my aim again to suggest that there are different ways to think about the cancer ordeal.

“Story is metaphor for life.”

That’s how a respected story consultant puts it. Stories, like metaphors (“love is a rose”), point beyond themselves drawing implied comparisons between a fictional world and real life. Well told, stories are saying something to the effect that: “Life is like this!”[1]

In other words, we use stories to make sense of experiences. For example, when something happens, no matter how awful, we often try to make it meaningful by saying that “some good will come of it.”

Gonna Fly Now

One regimen of cancer treatments I had overlapped with another man’s who was close to my age. He always brought with him a life-size cardboard cutout of Rocky, the celebrated movie character played by Sylvester Stallone.

I smiled, thinking to myself, whatever works for you.

Looking at that cardboard cutout of Rocky got me thinking. Rocky’s fighting spirit is part of a larger dramatic structure, traditional American stories that celebrate rugged individuals who triumph over adversity against all odds. That is the American myth, which scholars describe as individuals

“shak[ing] free of the limiting past in a struggling ascent toward the realization of promise in a gracious future.”[2]

You’ve seen that story hundreds, thousands of time. Only the names, faces, and circumstances change.

Rocky (1976), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, is a quintessential illustration. Rocky “the Italian Stallion” Balboa is a washed-up boxer who has to shake free of the limiting past by overcoming the limitations of his working-class existence and a life of loneliness.

Rocky gets “the chance of a lifetime” when he is chosen to fight Apollo Creed, the reigning heavyweight boxing champion. While training for the title fight he begins bonding with his shy love interest, Adrian. That’s when Rocky begins his struggling ascent, aptly symbolized by “Rocky Steps” fronting the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Rocky sets a personal goal to “go the distance” (last all fifteen rounds) against Apollo Creed, who has knocked out all his previous opponents. Rocky achieves that goal and wins Adrian’s love – the realization of promise in a gracious future.

Can you see how the story of Rocky dramatizes the American myth?

Pure Old-fashioned Melodrama

The Rocky saga is pure old-fashioned melodrama, a type of story characterized by strong emotionalism and sentimentality. The heroes and heroines are simply drawn as being pure-hearted, displaying natural talent, moral integrity, and the capacity for genuine love. The story shows the main protagonist(s) surmounting obstacles while exhibiting celebrated traits, chief among them self-reliance, ambition, bravery, and self-sacrifice. Audiences find deep satisfaction in the virtuous triumphing over formidable situations – misfortune, loss, disaster, or life-threatening events – and eventually living happily ever after.

Now, if American heroes have one thing in common it’s believing in yourself. You might recall the street-corner acapella group in Rocky singing:

Take you back, doo doo doo doo

Take you back

Well I been told by

Some people and they all

Say to take you back, back

To take you back like before

No, I don’t call this a reason

I just call it believing in myself

(Listen) “Take You Back (Street Corner Song from Rocky)”

A catchphrase for the American myth, believing in yourself means that through hard work and resolve each and every one of us can achieve anything. That cultural ideal tends to downplay the role of institutions or social circumstances making it seem that you own your success to no one but yourself, and if you fail it’s because you did not try hard enough. Failure then is a sign of individual weakness.

You Can Beat This

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not bashing American individualism (see endnote).[3] Nor am I even remotely suggesting that anyone diagnosed with cancer not “try hard” to cope with the disease or just “throw in the towel,” to use a boxing metaphor.

My point is that we can push the assumptions of our individualistic culture to an illogical extreme when it comes to wrapping your head around cancer. The result can be to create impossible expectations for some, putting a strong burden for achieving the goal – being cancer free – on a patient who, of no fault of their own, may well be up against insurmountable odds.

You’re strong. You can beat this.

Keep up the good fight.

Never give up.

Stay positive.

Nothing is impossible.

Here I am with the iconic Rocky statue located at the base of the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps known as the “Rocky Steps."

These phrases, and others like them, belong to the rhetorical world of the American myth and are no doubt intended to be encouraging, and again, whatever works for you. But a disease like cancer can overwhelm your body no matter how sturdy and resolute you are, how well you endure treatments, how regularly you exercise, how healthy you eat, how positive your attitude, or how faithful you (and others on your behalf) are in prayer.

And so I have to ask, what about those folks who are diagnosed with cancer and discover they have barely enough time to get their house in order? Or others who endure brutal treatments aware they have only a slim chance of working? And there are still others, like me, who live from test to test, managing to “kick the can down the road,” so to speak, while hoping for a medical breakthrough.

If you enjoy this article, I encourage you to share it with friends and visit my website for others like it.

Photo Credits (in order of appearance)

• Sharon Mollerus, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

• Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

• Honoré Daumier, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

• Author's photo

Footnotes

[1] Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (New York: Itbooks, 1997), 25.

[2] Robert Benne and Philip Hefner, Defining America: A Christian Critique of the American Dream (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), 8.

[3] American individualism emphasizes the moral and intrinsic worth of the individual and is the bedrock principle of our constitutionally conceived government. The defense of personal liberty ensures respect for equal rights for all people. And individualism encourages open expression of ideas and beliefs, sparks excellence, innovation, and creativity. All good things.

But individualism has negative aspects too. The strong emphasis on personal ambition, success, and goal achievement can lead to resistance to change and a lack of cooperation among groups. A focus on self-interests can lead to relentless competition, a decline in concern for the well-being of others, shared purpose, and the public welfare. It can also foster social isolation and a weakening of community bonds that results in conflict.

When taken to an extreme, focus on the self can become what psychologist David Myers calls “radical individualism,” when self-interest and self-indulgence outweigh social responsibility and moral obligation. David G. Myers, The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 7.

[4] In tune with my crucible metaphor, I find it helpful to turn ordeal (a noun) into an action verb to mean enduring a difficult or painful experience, or being subjected to a severe test or trial, or the act of going through something unpleasant or challenging.

In a follow-up blog post, I’ll conclude the Rocky saga and tell you a bit about my ordealing with cancer.

William D. Romanowski is an award-winning commentator on the intersection of religion and popular culture and author of a number of books, including Reforming Hollywood: How Protestants Fought for Freedom at the Movies and Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture. With his continuing commentary, he is trading footnotes for fiction, writing novels under the pen name (or nom de plume, as the French put it), Patmos Rhodes.