When foreigners think of America, they think of McDonald’s, the Statue of Liberty, Hollywood film stars, and the list goes on. In terms of Americans, people associate Texans with cowboy boats, Californians with surfboards, and New Yorkers with a snobbish grin on their face. It is true that all these things represent America in one way or another, but what exactly is American identity? Erikson’s analysis on American identity has drawn attention to four topics: Mom, adolescent, boss, and machine. He links all four topics together by using the myth of John Henry Hero. Goffman, on the other hand, develops dramaturgical analysis to understand human behaviors. He sees men as actors with different roles and these actors have to perform to different audiences. Even though Erikson’s approach and Goffman’s approach to understanding human identity are very different, both of them consider American identity changes over time because of the change in environment.
John Henry Hero is a representation of cowboys. Cowboy is a unique product form American culture. When people think about cowboys, they think of a carefree, independent white male, just like the ones on Marlboro advertisements. The birth and death of John Henry, as Erikson analyzes, gives two fundamental factors of American identity at the cowboy period: abandonment of and by parents, and rejections to intimate feelings.
Abandonment comes from Momism. A Mom is “a certain dangerous type of mother” (Erikson, P.289) that creates a mental or physical barrier for her children to live with. Erikson gives several examples on how parents can let their children down based on the John Henry myth. First, there are the expectations that parents want their children to achieve. In John Henry’s...
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...y, namely asserted by the church and politics instead. Also, role diffusion in the adolescent and the increase in automation and autocrats in the society contributes significantly to the change in social surroundings, which results in the transformation of identity. Goffman employs the dramaturgical approach and describes how an individual, in different “stages,” will have to perform according to a script for his social role and try to convince his audience about his role. Goffman notes that there are times where individuals will have to work together as teams in order to convince the same audience. Nonetheless, these teams change as the stage changes. Therefore, as a conclusion, American identity changes through time as the environment changes – foreigners may very likely to think of America based on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal instead of the Statue of Liberty!
In a normal functioning family, both parent and child care for and love one another, and display these feelings. A parent is required to nurture his or her child and assure that the child feels loved by spending time together, and by giving the child sufficient attention. However, there are often times when a parent is unable to fulfill these requirements, which can ultimately have damaging effects on the child. A child who is neglected by his or her parents “perceives the world as a hostile and uncaring place. In addition to this negative perception of the world, the neglect a child faces affects later interaction with his or her peers, prompting the child to become anxious and overly withdrawn” (Goldman). This neglectful type of parenting proves to be a pattern in the novel Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, as the main characters, Jimmy, Crake, and Oryx are crucially affected by their parents’ choices and are unjustly abandoned by them. In this novel, the neglect of parents, especially mothers, is clearly reflected in the behaviours of the three main characters.
Romantic Author James’s Fennimore Cooper created characters in the tradition of independence and self-control. Apart of his “Leather Stockings” series, “The Last of The Mohicans,” uses the American frontier an aesthetic articulation of male Identity. (“Masculine Heroes” American Passages Voices and Visions) In an excerpt from Cooper’s classic, “From Volume I Chapter III”, (Cooper. 485-491) the reader is introduced to the recurring character Natty Bumppo – referred to as Hawkeye-- and his friend Chingachgook. Both men can be seen as representations of the American Frontier, Heroes that embody the mythic elements in Cooper’s setting. They are rugged frontiersmen that thrive self-sufficiently, in a world of harsh realities.
The development and performance of identity has intrigued researchers from all disciplines. The Self and being have been conceptualized and investigated from varying points of view. Goffman and Butler have created frames through which performance of the self can be comprehended. (Goffman, 1959) brings forth the frame of “impression management” and Butler discusses “performative identity” (Butler, 1990). Impression management explains how people alter their presentation of the self to fit social contexts and mentions how social interactions can reshape an individuals sense of identity. Whereas performative identity claims that one’s identity is constructed discursively and that individuals perform according to
Racial and ethnic identity are crucial elements in the framework for individual and communal identity in our society. Deep values through religion and family create a sense of racial and ethnic identity and are manifested in sensible ways for many distinct minority populations in the United States. Individuals with these beliefs have different cultural values that are undesirable in mainstream American society. For others, on the other hand, especially white Americans, ethnic and racial identity are virtually invisible because societal normality is usually constructed around their ethnic, racial and cultural values. We commonly refer to them as the “standard American culture.” In Native Speaker, the protagonist, Henry Park, is unable to define himself in American society. This essay will discuss Park’s cultural self and his path to discovering himself in relationship to his family, friends, and the United States, as well as drawing in personal experiences that relate to Park’s.
The Extent of American Unity and Identity Since early colonization the English colonies had always felt closer to England than to each other. In fact, it took a British newspaper less time to reach Savannah than a letter from Massachusetts. However, after the French and Indian War a sense of unity began to permeate through the colonies as a result of British acts. For every British action there was an American reaction, which fed the spirit of a new identity as Americans, not English colonists. The American identity was being established in the years before the revolution, but it was not the majority as some colonists stayed loyal to the King.
Watters, Ethan. Crazy like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. New York: Free, 2010. Print.
This pattern continues today and is prevalent in more modern American writings as well. John Okada’s No-No Boy and Jack Kerouac’s “The Vanishing American Hobo,” two seemingly very different portraits of America, published within three years of each other in 1957 and 1960 respectively, both contain a thread of a confusion of self-identity as it relates to a larger American identity. These two works not only view the relationship between self-identity and country, but also delve into what happens when a country does not accept the identity that an individual has chosen for himself or herself. In No-No Boy, Ichiro and many other Japanese-American characters in the novel must create new American identities for themselves in the aftermath of Japan’s defeat in World War II. In...
Before the 20th century, individual progress was the definition of the American identity. Success was zero-sum; the people that did progress had authority over the people that didn’t, and people had this overwhelming desire to strive to the fullest as an individual. Several developments throughout American history demonstrated the desire to succeed and progress in America before the 20th century. Slavery, industrialization, and the great depression are events that had an immense impacted the American identity in the 1920s by transforming it from an identity built on a greedy desire to strive and progress as an individual to one that strives to progress as a nation in whole.
Identity is primarily described primarily as what makes a person who they are. While it is seen as an individual asset, one’s identity can be shaped and persuaded not only by life experiences, but by society as well. Bryan Stevenson speaks on several controversial issues and proclaims certain societal problems and the typical behaviors noticed in response to them. How one approaches the issues that are spoken about may expose their true identity. Stevenson argues that how one reacts to racial inequality within the criminal justice system may regulate their identity. In addition to that, how dealing with the nation’s history may force a growth on one’s identity, eventually bringing peace and acceptance to the nation. Lastly, how one views the
The concept of identity is central to the conception of self. National identity is something that became increasingly important as the world became more integrated, as the various cultures of the world began to interact. The culture of the individual is thereby a concept that is constructed both internally and externally through interactions with one’s country and also the world around it. Herein, the concept of the American identity will be explored related to the period of 1870 to 1930. As will be demonstrated, over the course of this period, American identity became a concept that was particularly difficult to achieve for African Americans given the lingering racial tension and racism lingering from the Civil War.
Because of the outlaw hero’s definitive elements, society more so identifies with this myth. Ray said, “…the scarcity of mature heroes in American...
Abandonment occurs on two levels in Bradbury's story. First, the children are figuratively abandoned by their parents when they are left in the care of a technological baby sitter (Harold, 2001). As the character of David McClean tells George, "You've let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children's affections. This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents"(Bradbury, 163). This accidental abdication of parental responsibility sets the children up to become emotionally attached to the nursery. Then, when George threatens to turn off the nursery, the children are terrified because now they are going to be abandoned by their new, surrogate parent, the nursery.
In its history, America has been one of the most influential, and influenced cultures of the world. So many different people, ideas, and products have been in and out of this country that American culture is one of , if not, the most diverse social structure of its time. Although it has been through many evolutions and revolutions, a certain time in this nation’s history can be pinpointed as its most drastic. The cultural movement of the 1960s was one of the largest evolutions of its kind that America has experienced thus far as it separated the rebellious youth from the traditional norm practiced by their well-seasoned elders.
In this paper I will be focusing on Erikson’s Theory mainly about identity versus role confusion. Finding one’s identity is not always an easy task. Everyone at some point in his or her life has had, as Erikson puts it, an identity crisis. Everyone experiences different struggles that can have either a positive or negative impact on their identity. On my path to identity, I have reached identity achievement, which means I have explored and made commitments. I will also be focusing on two articles highlighting a fifth possible outcome regarding identity and looking at identity statuses as developmental trajectories.
Abandonment, the action or fact of abandoning or being abandoned, is an issue not only shown in Jennifer Clément’s “Prayer of the Stolen” but that is also prevalent in today’s society. Although abandonment comes in many forms, abandonment of the family, and daughters specifically will be the main focus in this research paper. Child Abandonment in specific is also known today as a form of neglect and is classified as a parent leaving a child for a lengthy period of time, without providing any type of financial support or clear intentions to return to the child’s life. This neglect has a number of negative short term as well as long-term effects on families, and children specifically.