Trauma and Resilience in My Friends

Defining the Thematic Claim

In My Friends, Fredrik Backman argues that trauma is an inescapable inheritance—passed down through families, reinforced by small-town violence, and internalized as self‑hatred. Yet resilience is not about escaping that inheritance; it is about learning to carry it alongside loyal friends who see your worth when you cannot see it yourself. The novel insists that healing is incomplete, messy, and often contradictory. Art, memory, and everyday acts of care become the fragile threads that keep characters from drowning.

The epigraph from Anton Ego sets the stage: “the world is often unkind to new talent and … the new needs friends.” This frames the entire story. Every character in My Friends is a “new” person—a child trying to become an adult, an artist trying to create, a survivor trying to live—and none can do it alone. The thematic claim thus intertwines trauma (the unkind world) with resilience (the friends who make new beginnings possible).

Tracing the Theme Across the Plot

Kimkim’s Childhood: Abuse, Suicidal Ideation, and the Lifeline of Friendship

Kimkim (the artist C. Jat) grows up with a mother lost to depression and a father who dismisses him as “an accident.” At school he is bullied by a teacher called “the Owl,” who mocks his drawings and crushes his confidence. The evidence from chapter 25 shows Kimkim “certain that he was worthless,” carrying a backpack full of pills and cuts on his wrists. Joar sees the pills but cannot find words; instead, the friends run together, jump into the sea, and make each other laugh. When Kimkim finally paints a mural on a school wall, Joar tells him: “Now you know that you don’t want to die” (chapter 25 evidence). That mural—the first version of what will become “The One of the Sea”—is a direct act of resilience. Kimkim does not instantly heal; he will still struggle with suicide as an adult. But the friendship gives him a reason to finish the painting, and the painting becomes a record of that summer’s beauty and violence. The skulls he paints everywhere (chapter 6) are symbols of mortality, but also of the fragility his friends help him survive.

Joar: Domestic Violence, the Knife, and the Failure of Revenge

Joar’s father beats his mother so severely that her arm breaks and the radiator is dented. Joar hides a knife under the flower box in his bedroom, planning to kill the man if he hurts his mother again (chapter 14). The summer they turn fifteen, Joar nearly acts, but his father does not come home that night. Later, when his mother is killed by a blow to the temple—presumably from the father—Joar’s plan collapses. He is left with the knife that was never used, and later carries two bars of soap taped together to mimic its weight (chapter 51). This symbol—the knife replaced by soap—embodies Joar’s attempt to clean away his violence, yet the trauma remains. His resilience comes not from revenge but from Ted’s refusal to abandon him over decades of alcoholism and guilt. Joar’s story shows that resilience sometimes means surviving the unbearable, not triumphing over it.

Ted: Generational Fear and the Choice to Become a Teacher

Ted’s older brother bullies him, and the “Ox”—a young man from the harbor—beats Ted bloody when he defends his brother (chapter 34). Ted grows up terrified of men, flinching at sudden movements. Yet he channels that fear into a profession: he becomes a teacher (chapter 58) to offer children “a safe, still place.” This is a quiet but profound form of resilience. He does not overcome his fear—he still feels it when attacked by men at the train station years later (chapter 34). But he uses his trauma to protect others. Ted’s friendship with Louisa, Joar, and Kimkim teaches him that not all men are dangerous, and that he can be a different kind of man. His choice to teach in a prison at the novel’s end (chapter 59) extends that resilience to those who have been failed by the system.

Louisa: Grief, Anger, and the Refusal to Let Art Become Commodity

Louisa’s trauma begins at age five when her mother abandons her; she grows up in foster care. Her best friend Fish dies after aging out of the system. In the opening chapters, Louisa breaks into an auction to vandalize a painting, driven by grief and anger at a world that treats art as investment rather than beauty. Her resilience is expressed through defiance: she draws a tiny red fish next to a famous painting (chapter 2) and later refuses to sell Kimkim’s artwork, saying she would then “see all art as money” (chapter 58). The red fish becomes a symbol of memory and hope—a trace of Fish that cannot be bought. Louisa’s healing is not complete; she still attacks men with a pipe to save Ted. But she finds a path to art school and eventually becomes a famous artist herself, recognizing another “one of us” in a teenage artist (chapter 59). Her resilience is the ability to turn rage into creation.

Character and Symbol Connections

The novel uses a tight web of symbols to link trauma and resilience:

Skulls (painted by Kimkim everywhere) represent mortality and the constant presence of death—Joar’s mother, Ali, Fish, and Kimkim himself all die. Yet the skulls also appear in the famous painting, alongside flowers and laughter, acknowledging that beauty and death coexist.
The One of the Sea (the central painting) shows the friends on a pier, about to jump into the sea. It captures the moment of trust and abandon that made their friendship possible. Louisa sees it as something beautiful that can “make her forget her fear” (chapter 1). The sea itself is a dual symbol: it is the depth where they nearly drown (chapters 6, 17) and the surface they rise to, crying “Here!” to find each other.
Red fish (drawn by Louisa as a child on a postcard and later on the museum painting) ties back to Fish, her dead friend. The fish is a mark of memory and a refusal to let loss be erased.
Knife and soap (Joar’s hidden knife and later the soap substitute) symbolize the thin line between violence and care. Joar wants to be a protector but carries the potential for murder. The soap is a pathetic, comic replacement that also suggests cleansing—an attempt to wash away the trauma he cannot stop living with.

Complexity and Contradiction

Backman does not offer a neat redemption arc. Resilience in My Friends is always partial, sometimes self‑destructive. Joar nearly kills his father and later struggles with alcohol; his mother dies anyway. Kimkim becomes world‑famous but dies before age forty, still whispering Joar’s name in his sleep (chapter 17). Ted remains frightened but learns to act despite fear. Louisa’s violence against the men at the train station disturbs her: she “will hate herself for this, and how natural this violence is to her” (chapter 34). The painting that saves Kimkim also becomes a global commodity that Louisa ultimately refuses to sell—but her refusal does not undo the art world’s corruption.

The greatest contradiction is that friendship itself cannot prevent death. Ali dies at eighteen while surfing abroad. Kimkim dies in his thirties. Fish dies. Joar’s mother dies. Yet the friends who remain—Ted, Louisa, Joar—carry those losses into their adult lives. Resilience is not about moving on; it is about continuing to call “Here!” even when the voice is only an echo.

Study Questions

How does the epigraph from Anton Ego frame the novel’s understanding of trauma and resilience?
Answer: The epigraph states that the world is unkind to new talent and that “the new needs friends.” This suggests that resilience cannot be achieved alone; trauma (the unkind world) must be countered by companionship. Every character’s new beginning—whether artistic, professional, or emotional—relies on the friends who protect and believe in them.
In what ways does Kimkim’s painting “The One of the Sea” serve as both a symbol of trauma and a symbol of resilience?
Answer: The painting is born from a summer of violence and suicidal despair, yet it also captures the friends’ laughter and their leap into the sea together. It represents the simultaneous darkness and light of adolescence. The act of painting itself is a survival mechanism—Joar says it proves Kimkim “doesn’t want to die.” Later, the painting’s fame becomes a source of conflict, but Louisa preserves it as a record of what they survived.
What role does Joar’s knife play in his story, and why does he later carry soap taped to the same weight?
Answer: The knife represents Joar’s plan to kill his abusive father—a violent response to trauma that he never carries out. After his mother dies, he hides the knife. Later, he carries two bars of soap taped together to mimic the knife’s weight (chapter 51). The soap symbolizes his attempt to cleanse himself of violence, but also his inability to let go of the protective instinct. It is a tragic, almost absurd substitute that underscores the lifelong burden of his trauma.
How does Ted’s decision to become a teacher reflect his resilience, and what limitations does his choice reveal?
Answer: Ted becomes a teacher to offer children “a safe, still place” (chapter 58), directly countering his own violent upbringing. This is a deliberate, compassionate act of resilience. However, he remains frightened of men throughout his life; even as an adult he freezes during the attack at the train station (chapter 34). His resilience is not the absence of fear but the commitment to act despite it, and he extends this protection to others—even prisoners at the novel’s end.
Why does Louisa refuse to sell Kimkim’s painting at the end of the novel? What does this reveal about her understanding of trauma and recovery?
Answer: Louisa says she would then “see all art as money” (chapter 58). By refusing to sell, she insists that the painting’s value lies in its personal and communal meaning—a record of their shared trauma and resilience. This reflects her belief that healing cannot be commodified. Her own journey from vandalism to art school shows that she has learned to channel her anger into creation, but she remains protective of that creation against exploitation.