When I am stressed, I take refuge in stories, in a book or a film. When I am overwhelmed with stress, I turn to familiar stories. Things I have read or seen a hundred times. My brain can no longer tolerate any additional anxiety or suspense.

For the hundredth time, I pick up my phone, scrolling through Telegram channels and Instagram stories. I watch the painful videos coming out of Iran and put it aside again. I am restless. I lie down in front of the TV once more. The Army of the West has reached the Black Gate of Mordor. The gate opens, and a vast horde of Orcs pours toward them. Aragorn turns to his army:

"Hold your ground! Hold your ground! Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!"

The Orc army is endless. The Army of the West stands no chance against them. But they continue to fight. They endure just long enough for Frodo to succeed in his mission, until the darkness ends.

I think a lot about what the duty of ordinary, everyday people is in an era of endless decline, in times of absolute darkness, when every door, window, and aperture is closed. There, where every method of struggle seems like a path to a greater ruin. There, where the dead are so numerous that the very act of living is tinged with shame, what is the duty of the living? Theodor Adorno once said (and this quote of his is being shared a lot these days) that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. But I think of the multitude of prisoners in those death camps where no hope was alive. I think of what a human's duty is when held captive by depravity. There is a scene in the film Schindler's List where a day arrives just like any other. The camp, the prisoners, the dead, and the darkness are all as they were. Only one thing is different. Suddenly, the prisoners are no longer prisoners. To be honest, I think Adorno and those who think like him, believing that literature loses its legitimacy in times of slaughter, have not read enough stories. People usually do not count reading stories as reading books. Yet we live in a world where, if there is an answer to any question, it must be sought within stories. If there is only one place where literature is legitimate, it is during the reign of darkness.

Those who read many stories know that one thing is common in most epics and narratives: the desperate battle, men and women who, in absolute ruin and without hope of deliverance, do not stop fighting. The final battle in stories is almost always the same and consists of these four pillars:

1. The Total Collapse of Strategic Hope: No reinforcements are on the way and no clever plan remains. Death does not subside. Instead, it tightens its grip moment by moment.
2. Action Beyond Belief: Characters continue even though they have absolutely no hope of victory, as if not fighting is more terrifying than death itself. Fighting becomes a virtue in itself, not a means to a result.
3. Suspended Time: The story stretches this "last stand" so long that the reader feels trapped and imprisoned within it, as if time has stood still.
4. The Moment: A sudden action collapses the entire magnitude of horror. Victory is not gradual. It is an instantaneous reversal. The key is this: no one knows this moment is coming. This deliverance arrives so suddenly it feels unfair or miraculous.

And of course, this victory is never truly unfair or miraculous. Frodo destroys the Ring because it is his mission. Auschwitz is suddenly emptied of Nazi soldiers because, in a place far away, another war has reached victory. In the Battle of Winterfell in Game of Thrones, the living fight the army of the dead with all their might all night long. The army of the living diminishes as the army of the dead grows, until elsewhere, Arya kills the Night King with a dagger that has traveled the length of the entire story to reach her hand. In the final scene of the Battle of Hogwarts, when the war reaches its peak, the school is a ruin. Children fight trained killers. The dead pile up rapidly and senselessly. But most crucially, most characters are not even aware that Horcruxes exist, let alone whether victory is mathematically or logically possible. Yet they fight, so that Harry can fulfill the duty and prophecy ordained for him.

There is no miracle. While others fight in a war where victory is unimaginable, they endure until that moment arrives. It is the moment when someone, somewhere else, fulfills the duty ordained for them, even if the others have no news of it or no hope for it.

Many people ask themselves, surrounded by the army of death, what remains for the living besides mourning. Many Iranians ask themselves what is to be done with all these slain and this cemetery built to the scale of a country. I have found my answer in stories.

Stories do not promise us that endurance will necessarily be rewarded, but they teach us that disappearance should not be voluntary. Literature teaches steadfastness and resilience for those moments when the power of will has collapsed, not as a permanent political ethic but as a way to stay. Survival in literature is rarely a triumph. It is only the postponement of destruction.

One must stay alive and fight to stay alive. Because leaving the field and surrendering it to others means submitting to the world that the army of depravity wants. From a certain point onward, our duty is no longer "optimism." It is not hope. It is not rebellion or combat. Rather, the only duty is not to betray "meaning." Staying is who we are. It is enduring. It is staying alive and living, at any cost and through any agony. For when nothing is improving and no opening can be imagined, the task is not to believe, it is not to disappear.