Identity

Everyone is assigned an individuality at birth. Our names, our parents' names, our ancestry, our race - all these factors and more are bundled up in a permanent, unalterable package and handed to us, a package which we carry around our whole lives, whether we like its contents or not. As we walk through the journey that is life, we build another package for ourselves, adding and subtracting whatever we choose. Its contents are always changing; it's a fully customizable  set. Together, these packages make up our identity - both who we are and who we want to be. 
Now let us switch gears...Once upon a time there was a man living in the 1920s. The package he was assigned at birth stated that he was James Gatz, son of "shiftless and unsuccessful farm people", and hence he was destined to be a poor man (98). He didn't like this. So he built another package for himself, in which, among other things, he added a medal from "Montenegro" for "Valour Extraordinary" and a photograph of himself with "the Earl of Doncaster" at Oxford (67). He sealed the box and created a new label for it, which read "Jay Gatsby".

This man, he spent the rest of his life trying to convince everybody around him, as well as himself, that he was Jay Gatsby. When people doubted him, he pulled out the medal or the picture for proof. He lived his life with the package he created wrapped around him like a shelter blanket, but at his core, whether he liked it or not, he was always James Gatz.

Everyone has slight, subconscious deviations in their identity, in how they act. We are slightly different people at home than at school, with friends than with teachers. We present different things from our packages to different people. As long as the contents of the package of who we are and the package of who we want to be are not mutually exclusive, it's all good.
Just don't try to make up a Jay Gatsby for yourself.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 29, 2017 at 2:44 PM

    I love the comparison Iman! The way you describe individuality in terms of a box is really creative. Also I really like the part where you say "just don't try to make up a Jay Gatsby for yourself." Especially in our society today, I feel that many of us hold multiple personalities, and it is important to be yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownOctober 29, 2017 at 3:21 PM

    Iman! This comparison between identity and a mail package is so original and fresh! I especially enjoyed how you described the way we present ourselves to different people as showing off different items in the package. I definitely agree with you position on the topic of identity and you finally statement is a moral that I resonate with.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mouse Trap, Part II

Image
Why does Art Spiegelman choose to represent Jews as mice? The reason for this is that Jews were literally depicted as mice, representing that they were "vermin", in many Nazi propaganda posters.  " Rats: Destroy them " The chapter title pages stem from this sort of Nazi propaganda and are heavily symbolic. The above image is Chapter 6 of volume I. On the poster, the rat is depicted as having the face of a Jew. What appears to be a crumpled piece of paper lies beside the rat, to further emphasize how unimportant and filthy the Jews were thought to be. On the cover page, two mice (Vladeck and Anja) are standing in a literal mouse trap. This is the chapter in which Vladeck and Anja are deceived by the smugglers, which is what the trap represents. While the images are very different, there are similarities. The beam of light in the background of the cover page resembles the piece of paper on the poster.  Both images' title text looks somewhat similar i...
Read more

Let Freedom Ring

Image
When we think of freedom, we think of it’s literal definition, which, as defined by Google Dictionary, is “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint”. Freedom to us means being able to do what we wish and not being under the command of someone else. To David Foster Wallace, however, freedom is something else. In This is Water he describes “the really important kind of freedom” as “[involving] attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over”. According to him, “That is real freedom” (5). Wallace describes freedom as living consciously and being aware of what’s going on around us. He describes freedom as having the ability to deter from our innate self-centeredness and having a mindset of empathy.  At first, I disagreed with Wallace. I agreed that living consciously, being aware of your surroundings, sacrificing and having empathy are ...
Read more

Perceptions

Image
vase or two faces? (Sorry about the font - I don't know why but I can't make it bigger.) Our perceptions and opinions about something can be drastically different from the reality. We forget that our perception of something may not be true, that there are many different angles to everything and we can only see one. We always feel entitled to establish our own perceptions about something and treat those perceptions as fact, even if we aren't able to fully understand the situation. The disabled mannequins, which were created in Sweden for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, were met with a variety of responses from the public. Most of the viewers looked at the mannequins with what looked like confusion or displeasure. My interpretation was that they believed that the mannequins made this way would offend people with disabilities and make them upset. This was the public's perception - that disabled people would feel that they were being mocked by su...
Read more