Identity, By Andrew Solomon: The Formation Of Identity

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What is identity? There is a common understanding of identity that is the distinct personality of individuals. Moreover, there is another understanding that the identities are the behavior that helps people to distinguish from others. Whatever the consideration is, identities represent who we are, and people are the combination of different identities. There are many people optimistic, but the number will be decreased while adding the other types of personality. Finally, there is only one person can fit into all the characters. That is the reason for the uniqueness of individuality. What is more, the formation of identities is the result of the surroundings. Andrew Solomon explains in his essay “Son,” that we are born with characteristics. The primary surrounding what people stay in their families where shaped their “vertical identity” that is the transmitted by their parents, such as gender, nationality, and races and those vertical identities are difficult to change. However, not all identities can be stable, Solomon suggests that there are also many “horizontal …show more content…

The influences are mainly in two forms, reinforcing or changing. And the primary cause is the development of the self-awareness. It makes people have a better understanding of who they are and also what they want. Nevertheless, an environment cannot affect all identities, even though, there are some identities which will bring the illness to people, they still have no abilities to alter them. Those identities will accompany them for a lifetime. However, the uniqueness of individuals are formed because of all the identities that people have. Whatever the vertical, horizontal or the unchangeable identities, individually they cannot represent who we are. And only the combination of all of them can define the person as a unique

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