Introduction In the following essay I will discuss a number of readings and films from this semester and their theories on identity including Sartre, Life of Pi and “Lars and the “Real” Girl”. I will present these theories as I understand them and what the writer is trying to say regarding whether or not we have control over our identities. I will also present my take on these ideas and how I can apply them to my life and my identity. “No Exit” In Sartre’s “No Exit”, the characters are fumbling with their identities throughout the play. By writing this way, Sartre presents the difficulty in knowing one’s own identity and where it comes from. This can be witnessed through the back and forth banter throughout the play where Estelle seeks …show more content…
He is choosing his identity and hers by projecting it through her. Bianca is a defensive/coping mechanism, as a way for him to comfortably interact with others. It is assumed that Lars struggled with his identity throughout his life as had little to no support growing up. At times we are not always in control of our identity. We all have ascribed statuses and achieved statuses. Sometimes we have ascribed statuses that have a heavy impact on who we are and we can not escape them. Other times we can make due with what we have and work toward some new achieved statuses to help outweigh the ascribed. Lars was born into a world without a mother which led to many difficult things, but he was able to achieve the status of boyfriend, or lover if you will, and really expand his identity. I have been very fortunate with my ascribed statuses or the identity I cannot control, but work hard to maintain and achieve more statuses to better know and understand my identity. When I am stressed or feel strongly about something I write it down as a way to vent, understand my feelings and move past a situation, Lars uses a doll. Bianca becomes a part of Lars and is not just a gateway for Lars to express himself, but lets others communicate to him as
Personal identity, in the context of philosophy, does not attempt to address clichéd, qualitative questions of what makes us us. Instead, personal identity refers to numerical identity or sameness over time. For example, identical twins appear to be exactly alike, but their qualitative likeness in appearance does not make them the same person; each twin, instead, has one and only one identity – a numerical identity. As such, philosophers studying personal identity focus on questions of what has to persist for an individual to keep his or her numerical identity over time and of what the pronoun “I” refers to when an individual uses it. Over the years, theories of personal identity have been established to answer these very questions, but the
Identity is a group of characteristics, data or information that belongs exactly to one person or a group of people and that make it possible to establish differences between them. The consciousness that people have about themselves is part of their identity as well as what makes them unique. According to psychologists, identity is a consistent definition of one’s self as a unique individual, in terms of role, attitudes, beliefs and aspirations. Identity tries to define who people are, what they are, where they go or what they want to be or to do. Identity could depend on self-knowledge, self-esteem, or the ability of individuals to achieve their goals. Through self-analysis people can define who they are and who the people around them are. The most interesting point about identity is that some people know what they want and who they are, while it takes forever for others to figure out the factors mentioned before. Many of the individuals analyzed in this essay are confused about the different possible roles or positions they can adopt, and that’s exactly the reason they look for some professional help.
Lars treats Bianca like any normal human being, he dresses her, she “sleeps”, he takes her to the therapist, parties, and much more. At work, this girl Margo has a crush on Lars and he sort of understands and likes her back but it takes him a while to start getting comfortable around her. Later on Lars starts to believe that Bianca is going to leave him and that she is dying. He makes all of her decisions for her and about everything that happens to her and everyone in the town lets it happen to get Lars better. Bianca
One’s identity is influenced by many things. It’s something that one has a choice of what he wants to become. One has a personal choice as to what identity he possesses; for instance, he can choose what he likes, who he wishes to be friends with, and what he wears. After all, “Fashion is an expression of personal identity” (Latterell 11). Queen Latifah states, “All things start inside your soul and work outward” meaning that it is one’s choice as to what he lets work its way out (Latifah 34). People have even made personal choices that affect their identity by changing their name. Just as Firoozeh Dumas describes in The “F Word”, “Thus I started sixth grade with my new, easy name and life became infinitely simpler” (Dumas 86). People made fun of Dumas’ name, Firoozeh, and thus made her want to change her name to fit in; she changed her identity. An identity is mainly comprised of personal choice.
The movie Lars and the Real Girl shows the story of a man who develops a relationship with a plastic doll. He names the doll Bianca and believes that she is real. She is actually a delusion that Lars has created in his mind. The people of the town and even his own brother believe that he is crazy. Although this is the case all the townspeople pretend that Bianca is real because they all like Lars and want to help him out.
Life is never easy for anyone, however it is particularly harder during the time of adolescence. The period in which the person is no longer considered a child, but not quite an adult. Erik Erikson had many ideas about this period, and he focuses on the term identity diffusion. Rebecca Fraser-Thill describes this when she writes: “Identity diffusion is one step in the process of finding a sense of self. It refers to a period when an individual does not have an established identity, nor is actively searching for one. In other words, it's a time when a person's identity remains unresolved, yet there is no identity crisis (called an identity moratorium).” (Fraser-Thill, 2011) Erikson was able to carefully acknowledge the intrinsic components of the concept of identity diffusion. James Joyce’s text, The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man can apply to his analysis when Joyce begins to grow up. According to Erik Erikson the four major works of identity diffusion include intimacy, diffusion of time perspective, diffusion of industry and lastly negative identity which also applies to Stephen Dedalus from Joyce’s book.
In his 1971 paper “Personal Identity”, Derek Parfit posits that it is possible and indeed desirable to free important questions from presuppositions about personal identity without losing all that matter. In working out how to do so, Parfit comes to the conclusion that “the question of identity has no importance” (Parfit, 1971, p. 4.2:3). In this essay, I will attempt to show that Parfit’s thesis is a valid one, with positive implications for human behaviour. The first section of the essay will examine the thesis in further detail, and the second will assess how Parfit’s claims fare in the face of criticism. Problems of personal identity generally involve questions about what makes one the person one is and what it takes for the same person to exist at separate times (Olson, 2010).
It is interesting to wonder about what aspects creates someone’s identity. Identity is something that distinguishes someone’s character and what makes a person unique and different. The topic of identity is a very controversial topic and has many viewpoints and opinions. As more and more people have shared their opinions and joined the conversation about identity, people can start figuring out what their own opinion of identity is. It is important to realize that there is a mass aspects of identity that can change a viewpoint when looking at each different one. Some questions that will hopefully be answered -- “Are people born with an identity?”, “What makes us who we really are?”, “Is our sense of identity true?” -- to rectify for you what identity truly is.
What is personal identity? This question has been asked and debated by philosophers for centuries. The problem of personal identity is determining what conditions and qualities are necessary and sufficient for a person to exist as the same being at one time as another. Some think personal identity is physical, taking a materialistic perspective believing that bodily continuity or physicality is what makes a person a person with the view that even mental things are caused by some kind of physical occurrence. Others take a more idealist approach with the belief that mental continuity is the sole factor in establishing personal identity holding that physical things are just reflections of the mind. One more perspective on personal identity and the one I will attempt to explain and defend in this paper is that personal identity requires both physical and psychological continuity; my argument is as follows:
From the second you are born, you become. Infamously referenced in William Shakespeare’s play script, Hamlet, “To be, or not to be: that is the question” (III.I.56), this state of being has been discussed throughout all time and disciplines. Like the main character, Hamlet, it is common for an individual to contemplate their state of existence and its very worth as they approach critical points of identity and purpose. Our lowest points do not only serve as markers of crisis, rather, they too reveal the state of our identity. Written and sang about, a universal event of identity crisis is the dissolution of a romantic relationship—a breakup. Such was the case for my best friend, whom in attempt to maintain her anonymity I will refer to as Blue
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.
Sammy is just the normal average teenage boy that works at his town’s local A&P store. From the beginning of the story we are able to see that Sammy is very opinionated, sarcastic, and has a keen observational sense with lends insight into the deeper meaning of the story. While Sammy contently describes everything around him, we are able to get a feel for how he sees the world and how he thinks about things. Most of the story Sammy is found describing three girls that enter his store. Immediately we can see Sammy’s intense fascinations about these random three girls, thinking he’s just being a regular teenage boy. Sammy, however, goes beyond the surface details to glean insights about the people he observes. One of the girls he studies a little more intently, becoming fascinated by her. He points out how, “ She was the Queen,” (Updike 19), and how she naturally seemed to lead and catch anyone’s attention in an instant. What got him the most was the dangling bathing suit straps. Obviously this intrigued Sammy in a very sensual way, but they are also clues that he uses to construct an image of her inner life. Once he hears all of the girls speak, his imagination begins to spark about the girls, as he is...
In conclusion, the formation of one’s identity has many components. Beginning at the onset of adolescence and continuing to expand, grow and form and reform as we live through the struggles or success of life. Many theorists have endeavored to clarify the development of identity formation. However, Erik Erickson offered one significant theory involving the formation of one’s identity. Expounding on Erickson theory, Marcia developed his Identity Status Model according to the existence or absence of crisis and commitments. These four statuses, diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and achievement can combine in various ways to produce a self. One’s sense of identity is determined largely by the choices and commitments made, therefore, having a well-developed sense of self can provide an individual with insight to their strengths, weaknesses, and individual uniqueness. An individual that finds themselves
Overall, No Exit is a great work on part of Jean-Paul Sartre. In it he was able to include at least three of the very key facets of his beliefs in existentialism. They were Authenticity, Angst, and finally, The Absurd. The play had various examples in and of itself but most of them came from the characters and their behavior. Each character had a personality that fit very well into the certain mold that was a part of existentialism. Inez was sure of herself and who she was, Estelle was afraid to make any decision that could influence her as a person and finally Garcin took away or added meaning to the scheme of things. Sartre’s No Exit brought all of these facets together in a very cohesive fashion and overall showed how Existentialism can bring the best and the worst out of people.
In Erikson’s Identity vs. Role Confusion stage, I thought, “Who am I?” countless times like many other adolescents. I occupied much of my time trying to construct a firm identity of myself, which I now realized did more harm than good. Letting myself explore different interests would have helped me find my identity than me trying to fake some firm identity.