Custom Essays: Relationship Between Reality And Personal Identity

To start off, Jess’s dreams are more important than here culture, because they are who she is as a person. Jess does not simply want to be the traditional Indian girl that her parents want her to be, she wants more. Instead, Jess makes a bold decision that traditional Indian girls wouldn’t do, she chose to

Personal identity is a very controversial aspect of life. Who are we? What defines us? According to John Locke, psychological continuity is what defines our personal identity. Locke discusses the case of the prince and the cobbler to help shape his theory. However, I absolutely disagree with Locke’s theory. Locke’s theory of personal identity creates many problems, such as the duplication problem. By reformulating Locke’s theory of personal identity, we still come across these problems that prove Locke’s theory false.

While Mukherjee decided to embrace the new American culture, her sister decided to stick to her Indian roots. Mukherjee struggles to try and find where she belongs because she is always changing for others rather than for herself. Encountering differences is something she dealt with on her journey of creating her identity, she states, “Nearly 20 years ago, when I was living in my husband’s ancestral homeland of Canada, I was always well-employed but never allowed to feel part of the local Quebec or larger Canadian society” (Mukherjee 293). While changing herself to conform for others, we can all take a lesson from Mukherjee. In life, we go through many changes because we are growing up, becoming more mature, and finding things we like or dislike. We tend to change because of the people we surround ourselves with, like friends or coworkers in order to be accepted. However, she did not seem happy to be forced into a position where she had to conform to the way people would talk to her all for the sake of her husband. This takes away from building and developing one’s own identity because it does not represent who you really are. In society, we are sort of growing away from that in a sense people are taking pride in their identities. For instance, immigrants, women, and races are all

Identity plays an important role in a person’s life. It determines how a person lives, acts, communicates, and defines themselves in the world around them. During this semester, we have read a handful of short stories that have to do with an individual’s identity. Three of those stories include, “The Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka; “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” by Herman Melville; and “Orientation,” by Daniel Orozco. Each of these short stories gives examples of how your work can influence a person’s identity and attempt to remove the personal factor from everyday life.

Finally, Jayanti’s first exposure to the world outside her Aunt’s house and the events that lead after, changes who she really is,

Bharati married an American-Canadian fellow that would live in every part of North America with her over a span of thirty-three years. She became “opting to fluidity, self-invention, blue jeans, and T-shirts, and renouncing three thousand years of caste-observant, ‘pure culture’ marriage in the Mukherjee family.” Despite their differences, the sisters knew they were the only blood relatives they had on the continent, so they had regular Sunday morning calls where they were carelessly affectionate. During these conversations the sisters would have small talk rather than speak what was truly on their mind, yet they pity one another: Mira “for the lack of structure in [Bharati’s] life, the erasure of Indianness, the absence of an unvarying daily core.” Bharati “for the narrowness of [Mira’s] perspective, her uninvolvement with the mythic depths or the superficial pop culture of the American society.” It is clear that the two differ, however, in the ways in which they hope to interact with the country

"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” by Sherman Alexie is a book full of valuable life lessons and themes. The book expresses about the experiences of racism, prejudices towards other people, and living in poverty. Reading this book has taught me some valuable lessons, some of them being; Identity, knowing, understanding and accepting one’s self; having more self-esteem, and understanding the importance of family relations.

Lately my mornings are spent getting up between 5:30am and 6am. I get myself ready, I never look fantastic just passable, and I go to work. Part of my morning routine is getting my dog, Donovan, ready for the early part of his day as well. We go to the yard for his bathroom routine, we go inside where I feed him his diet dog food and inject him with insulin, we go upstairs where I place a new diaper wrap around his mid-section (dogs with diabetes leak, who knew?), and he goes back to bed to sleep beside my husband. After we say our goodbyes I head to work, or school, or whatever adventure life has for me that particular day. Rinse, wash, repeat. I had no idea when I was in my teenage years that my life at 32 years old would be a tattooed, married, full time working, full time schooling, boring, Puerto Rican, animal lover. Well, the animal loving part I knew since I was maybe 2.

Jayanthi experiments to get a sense of her own identity because by following her parent's wishes and "being a good girl, it gave Jayanthi some clarity and purpose, but it didn't feel like an identity of her own." (Bell 33). In other words, Jayanthi was fulfilling shoes that were not her own, she was being someone she was not but that allowed her to view answers about her identity. This is significant because it is why she ventured off and tried to find her individuality. As she was living a life that her parents wanted, it similarly plays out in a way of how society would have wanted Jayanthi to be,

Trauma is physical or mental damage that leaves the victim with lifelong distress, often leading to a poorer quality in life. In “Excerpts from Hard To Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom” by Leslie Bell, the twenty-something women experience psychological trauma when faced with the ambiguity in their pertaining to understanding the fulfillment of sexual relations. In “When I Woke Up Tuesday, It Was Friday,” Marta Stout, the psychoanalytic author, uses anecdotes from her patients to exemplify the trauma experienced by them. The trauma experienced by the patients of both works affects self-perception to whatever extent they permit it. Jayanthi, the bad girl, faced many traumatic events during her years of sexual experimentation

“You're Mexican?” Is the question that has been etched in my brain from a young age. As a person of Mexican descent and little resemblance to stereotypical appearances of brown eyes, short, and black hair, this is the hurtful response to my answer for the question,”,What ethnicity are you?” Unfortunately, the assertion that I am Mexican is something that I have had to defend throughout my entire life. In defense of this part of my identity, I write this essay.

Building an identity often involves forming a unique personality that abides by the need for affiliation, which is a sense of belonging within a community. Thus, sociocultural norms often dictate how a person ought to act, while at the same time discouraging out of the box mental processes. This leads to citizens assimilating to the culture in place, which leads to a socially determined state of normality. Leslie Bell explores the need for affiliation concept by examining female sexual activity in her book, “Selections from Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom.” In her book she details the lives of females who struggle to build a sexual identity because of their newfound freedom in their early to mid-twenties. The conflict stems from male created social expectations that act as pathway for women to follow. Quite simply, women are faced with choosing either celibacy or hooking up. This leads into Martha Stout’s essay, “When I woke up Tuesday Morning it Was Friday”, where she discusses mental health, and the impact of traumatic experiences. Furthermore, the author focuses on the ability humans have to disassociate, or withdraw from reality, and argues that because so many people use this tactic, then perhaps the idea of normalcy needs to be questioned. This connects back to Leslie Bell, where she argues that women need to liberate themselves from the black and white, either or, patterns of thinking to progress in society. In other words, Bell

After going through this novel, “The hero’s walk” Nandana, the young girl has no other option than to live with her grandparents. In passing days, she may be adapted to Indian culture. Her grandfather Sripathi as usual writer letter to the editor of the News paper starting, “early this morning, at Toturpuram beach, I saw the most amazing sight....”

“The Absolutely Diary of Part-Time Indians” is an entirely young-adult novel with distinctive trait: first love, first fight, first complexes. However, no matter how we tried to convince ourselves that we are unique, in fact, we all had the same childhood with an amendment to the wealth of parents, the status, and location of the school. We all had heavy backpacks, drew on desks, suffered humiliation from high school students, were embarrassed by the clothes that our mother was buying, complexed because of pimples and our body structure, dreamed of stuffing the face to that person who harassed us, and, of course, were in love with the most beautiful (in our opinion) girl or boy in the classroom (who of course, post-factum, turned out to be stuck on a fool (just then we did not know about it)).

Many people question themselves, what is it exactly that makes them unique? What is it that defines them as a unique person that no one in the world possesses? In philosophy, these questions do not have just one answer, and all answers are correct depending on which theory appeals most and makes sense to you. In general, there are two ways people approach this question, some say that a person’s identity is the “self” that carries all of their experiences, thoughts, memories, and consciousness (ego theorists), and some say that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences and events that a person has been through in their life, these people deny that the “self” exists (bundle theorists). In this paper, I will be arguing that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences, denying the self and the memory criterion.