Human Identity In Marc Chagall's 'I And The Village'

What is human identity; is it a characteristic defined by humanism, interpreted into arbitrary degrees of humanity or rather is it the manifestation, or possession of a soul, of divinity? If such defines our identity, then is being human an inherited genetic attribute or is it a state we achieve through knowledge and wisdom? Identity, however, is not always stable; it is an interpretation of the dynamic balance between humanity’s divine and animalistic personas, a debate of “ natural supremacy” between humans and nonhuman animals in nature.

While philosophers, like Plato, describe human identity by the possession of a divine soul, Marc Chagall’s painting I and the Village emphasizes how human identity is defined the ability to think about,

Self-awareness, however, is a state achieved only through one’s action, and is neither inherited nor given to. Chagall, in his painting I and the Village, contemplates the hypocritical flaws of “human” identity through his usage of perception, juxtaposing the animalistic nature of human animals to the anthropomorphic characteristics of nonhuman animals. Chagall’s usage of perception, between the representational views of sheep and the green-colored man in the foreground, represent a moral allegory between one’s animalistic nature and appearance. By aligning the sheep’s line of sight to the green-colored man, Chagall criticizes how humans, despite their attempts to segregate themselves from nonhuman animals, are ultimately unable to conceal, or hide, their true animalistic nature. Ovid, in his poem Metamorphoses, elucidates, in his narrative of Lycaon, human animals are prone to the same flaws to those of nonhuman animals. Despite Lycaon’s social position and power as king, his lack of self-awareness leads him to become transformed into his true persona: a wolf. Thus, Chagall, through perception, conceptualizes the principles of morality in nonhuman animals and immortality in human animal in order to contemplate the illusion in which humans are portrayed as greater than animals because of their moral