Personal identity is significantly complicated to obtain. The actual reason behind this complication is that every person has a moment in life where he or she chooses to change his or her true self in order to be accepted in the surrounding society. Imagination holds a significant part in contributing to a person’s identity development. Alison Gopnik introduces her readers to counterfactuals and counterfactual thinking, in her essay ‘Possible Worlds: Why Do Children pretend?’ She writes, “Human beings don’t live in the real world. The real world is what actually happened in the past, is happening now, and will happen in the future” (Gopnik 163). With this she is trying say that we don’t live in a single world but live in multiple worlds. These …show more content…
Alison Gopnik in her piece of work writes, “The evolutionary answer is that counterfactuals let us change the future. Because we can consider alternative ways the world might be, we can actually act on the world and intervene to turn it into one or the other of these possibilities” (Gopnik 165). Counterfactuals allow one to change the future. In short one person cannot change what has already happened, because it is scientifically impossible to change the events, which have already occurred in the past. Just like one cannot change the fact that he belongs to a particular race because he born in a family belonging to that race. Imagination helps us escape the reality and think about different possibilities. Covering, a concept introduced by Kenji Yoshino in his essay, ‘covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights’ is based on similar lines. Kenji Yoshino starts his essay by writing, “Everyone covers. To cover is to tone down a disfavored identity to fit in the mainstream” (Yoshino 293). Covering is the ability we humans possess which assists us in hiding our true identity and helps us portray ourselves as something we are actually not. Basically, covering is born out of our imagination. Zadie Smith the author of ‘Speaking in tongues’ talks about an imaginary place called dream city. In her essay Smith says, “It is a place of many voices, where the unified singular self is an illusion” …show more content…
Imagination is the ability to create a whole new world inside the mind. It gives us the ability to look at any circumstance from a different point of view, our personal point of view. Gopnik in her essay has written, “Knowledge is actually what gives imagination its power, what makes creativity possible. It’s because we know something about how events are connected in the world that we can imagine altering those connections and creating new ones” (Gopnik 181). A person with good creative abilities is said to have strong and a developed sense of imagination. A strong sense of imagination not only strengthens your creative abilities but also makes counterfactual thinking possible. On the other hand covering would not have been possible without the power of imagination; hence covering could be a branch of imagination. A person requires creative ability to cover. Multiple identities and multiple voices are a result of imagination. Yoshino in his essay has written, “I suspect they were all bowing to an unjust reality that required them tone down their stigmatized identities to get along in life” (Yoshino 294). All the famous names Yoshino talks about in his essay have covered their original identity and nobody could have done it without their power of imagination. All of those
First, Griffin reveals that there is a hidden side to everyone that is only known within, and anything outside could be a false representation, or imposter. "I think of it now as a kind of mask, not an animated mask that expresses the essence of an inner truth, but a
The literary device of the mask in Fahrenheit 451, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Lord of the Flies is recurring in each of the stories. The metaphoric mask is a both physical and symbolic object that alters the characteristics of an individual; usually the protagonist. The protagonist either gradually puts on or takes off the mask to change as a person. The mask itself acts how you would expect a real mask to work. A mask typically obscures the vision so that you can only see in one direction, and some obscure our vision to a blur. Despite that, the mask has a much deeper connotation in literature. The obscurity produced by the mask placed on one is not a true mask, but an event or decision significantly altering the traits of an individual. Such a transition is portrayed in literature as the putting on or removal of an actual mask. This makes easier for readers to understand, and creates a perceptible connection between the symbolism and reality. In the Lord of the Flies and Star Wars:
As they continue to remove their clothes, they become more and more stripped not only of their clothes but of their identities, rights, duties and even their memories of the real world. Here, the revelation about themselves is supposed to be revealed but they again put on their clothes and start to mask and embrace the inner truth about themselves yet
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.
This mask holds back all the sorrow, protects you from being further destroyed by others words or actions, and covers up the real extreme problems people are facing such as suicide and drug overdose. Both texts use these “masks” metaphorically to show how the people protect themselves.
The people we see every day are not always who they appear to be. Our family, friends, peers, work associates, and even our own self’s change who we are sometimes to cope or to seem better off than we are. We put on “Mask” to show the person we want to be seen as and often times people wear more than just one. In Flannery O’ Connor’s, “Good Country People” many of her main characters wore mask. They each had their own reasons that they chose to conceal their real identity. Nevertheless, the characters in O’Connor’s short story wanted to hide their true persona’s or deceive other people. Sometimes it was merely done to cope with their tragic pain and in other cases it was done to deliberately take advantage
Throughout the essay “Our secret” by Susan Griffin, Griffin talks about a few characters’ fears, secrets and she gives us insights into these “secrets”. Griffin comes to realize her own secrets and fears by examining others. She relates to a few of the characters such as Himmler, Leo, Helene and everyone else even though she is different than all of them. The only thing that all of these characters have in common is that they all represent human emotion. Susan Griffin reveals that everyone has a hidden side to them and anything being showed on the outside could be fake or a false representation of themselves. “I think of it now as a kind of mask, not an animated mask that expresses the essence of an inner truth, but a mask that falls like dead weight over the human face.” (Griffin 237) This quote explains what she means about secrets being the barrier to others’ feelings and having this mask hides what you really feel on the inside.
This proves Gergen’s thesis, “I doubt that people normally develop a coherent sense of identity, and believe that to the extent that they do, they may experience serve emotional distress” (172). By having several masks or selves, is how we are able to adapt to changing society. With these multiple masks we are able to achieve acceptance and know who we are as individuals. Throughout life we must adopt masks when facing different circumstances; it is through these masks that we see how we change as individuals. If we spend our lives trying to stick to one mask, we can find ourselves to feel lost, depressed, or invisible. Change is good; however we must still stay true to ourselves when using masks. They are a part of us as individuals but they are not us.
In today’s society masks are used depending on the specific social group we interact with. Most people tend to have various masks or personalities when they are with specific people; such as with their friends, family, and during work. In Kenneth Gergen’s essay “In Defense of Masks,” he claims that people are not apt to find a specific mask to which they can be true too however, having various masks could be important because it allows people to adapt to various social groups . I disagree with Gergen’s claim and counter argue that utilizing only one specific mask with whomever we interact with will help anyone live a genuine lifestyle. There are various categories that fall into masks; for instance, makeup, clothing, religion, and appearance. Many individuals acquire masks because they seek approval from others or simply because they are mimicking someone. Once someone adapts to having multiple masks, it is difficult to figure out our true identity due to the variety of personalities that are being portrayed.
In the essay, “Secret Skin: An Essay in Unitard Theory”, American novelist, Michael Chabon, disputes that superheroes utilize their costumes in hopes of ‘concealing’ background knowledge of: who they are, how they obtain their abilities or why they adopted their alter ego (Chabon par. 28). Chabon develops his claim by arguing that people transform instead of escaping reality. Chabon believes that costumes can make a person develop into a stronger, more esteemed version of themselves. His purpose is to emphasize costumes do not keep identities anonymous but are used to display a physical representation of a person’s inner being.
It is clear that there are many things that shape people’s identity. It could be family, surrounding, culture and many other things. These things help people to become who they are and affect the way they see the world around them. The question what shapes the identity is discussed in the works “Selection from love 2.0: How our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become” by Barbara Frederickson, “The Naked Citadel” by Susan Faludi, and “The Myth of the Ant Queen” by Steven Johnson. The authors view this question from different perspectives. However, there is one common thing that could be seen in all the three works. The authors prove that person’s identity is mostly shaped by interaction with other people and the
When given the thought, one makes the comparison that masks are used to describe our
As humans, do we consciously form our own identities? After all, one is rarely who they aspire to be. Take, for example, John Gardner’s character Grendel. Although Grendel seems to intentionally perpetuate his wretched state of being, it is also clear that this process creates, or is the product of some sort of internal struggle between what he considers to be the “two dark realities, the self and the world” (Gardner 47). For many individuals, including Grendel, existence appears to be nothing more than a never-ending series of conflicts, mostly between the actual state of things and our idealistic perception of what they should be. These conflicts, whether realized or not, generate a great deal of emotional and psychological turmoil. This idea is present in nearly every religion and school of philosophy and has been given many names throughout history, but the more recent technical term for this flaw in human thought is “cognitive dissonance”.
Our identity can sometimes be shaped by the way others see us. As we have seen, the way in which others view us can have some sort of impact on how we see ourselves. There are also other contributing factors such as our years of adolescence, the basic human need of wanting to belong and maturing; all play an equally important part in the forming of our character and who we are. On balance it appears that there is not only one influence in the shaping of our identity, but there are many.
Identity is what evolves us, it is what makes us think the way we do, and act the way we act, in essence, a person’s identity is their everything. Identity separates us from everyone else, and while one may be very similar to another, there is no one who is exactly like you; someone who has experienced exactly what you have, feels the way you do about subjects, and reacts the same to the events and experiences you have had. This became prevalent to me as I read through many books, that everyone goes through the process of finding who they are. A prevalent theme throughout literature is the idea that over time one develops their identity through life over time, in contrast to being born with one identity and having the same