The Multiple Substances Of Alice Sheldon

Self discovery is at the root of many stories. It is easily limited by external and internal factors. Tales about self discovery are often called a bildungsroman. A bildungsroman, essentially, is a coming of age novel. Both Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison are considered a bildungsroman. In the case of those two novels, there is one unique concept that contributes to their examples of self discovery. Double consciousness is that idea. It emphasizes how a person may struggle to adapt to more than one varying identities in order to fill a role within society. Double consciousness is present in both novels through the mindset and actions of characters who try to conform to the gender and racial roles placed upon their lives but find themselves in conflict with their limitations.

At the mention of the name Alice, one tends to usually think of the children’s stories by Lewis Carroll. Namely, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are two classic works of children’s literature that for over a century have been read by children and adults alike. These two stories tell the tale of a young girl named Alice who finds herself in peculiar surroundings, where she encounters many different and unusual characters. Although Alice is at the centre of both stories, each tale is uniquely different in its purpose, characters and style.

Human beings have full control over their identities after they have received knowledge and have become shaped from external stimuli. These stimuli include the teaching process of humans which comes through tradition, schooling, and the actions of other humans and the influence of the organisms around them. Andrew Solomon, through “Son,” was able to use his experience of growing up and labeling himself as a gay dyslexic to show how his environment and knowledge had shaped his identity and how it was viewed by others with different identities. In “An Elephant Crackup,” Charles Siebert was able to explain how the other organisms or humans are able to form new identities for elephants over time by shaping them a new environment and having the elephants process it. In “Mind’s Eye,” Oliver Sacks had different case studies of blindness from different people and was able to show how each one experienced their blindness help shape and express their individual identities. The stimuli that becomes processed by a person in the situations, accounts, and studies of these works assist in the role of explaining the formulation of an identity.

Alice has now passed through her by trail by fire, and she feels like an adult from the way others treat her as an individual. She declares “I am somebody: but her real maturation is not from how others respond to her, but from wise reflections on what it means to survivors the troubled times of adolescence.

The search for identity is a seemingly difficult task. There are numerous challenges preventing many from discovering who they are. In Collier’s short story Marigolds, the author uses the narrator’s transformation to show that during stressful times, one's true identity is established. The narrator gives a description of her childhood in the exposition of the story. Lizabeth described her childhood as, “After our few chores around the tumbledown shanty, Joey and I were free to run wild in the sun with other children similarly situated. For the most part, those days are ill-defined in my memory, running together and coming like a fresh water-color painting left out in the rain” (Collier 24). Lizabeth recalls living a leisurely childhood in Maryland. The author’s use of characterization is significant because it gives the reader insight into the life of the narrator. Lizabeth frolics with the other kids in the neighborhood and has a relaxed life. Sometimes Lizabeth harasses Miss Lottie

While most fictional characters are given a voice with which to express themselves, that voice usually does not stray beyond their realm of fiction and therefore is restricted from the power of the real world. The imaginary black man that Susan Smith falsely claimed had abducted her children in 1994, however, existed in reality in the minds of the American public for nine days until the truth surfaced about her infanticide. Cornelius Eady’s poetry cycle, Brutal Imagination, serves to give that imaginary black man (hereafter referred to as Zero), a voice that draws power from his simultaneous existence in both the real and fictional realms.

Despite being a very diverse literature genre in terms of influence and inspiration, North American literature encompasses many works that share some very common thematic elements. Though there are several themes shared, one in particular can be found in most any work – the importance of identity. Particularly in some selected pieces yet to be named, identity is a very important element, not only because it is a necessity for a main character in any work of literature, but because these works express ideas about identity as being very individualistic – as opposed to being a mere result of cultural surroundings. Zora Neal Hurtson’s Their

Alice Bradley Sheldon, known under her pseudonym James Tiptree Jr., was an important contributor to science fiction literature in the 70’s. In her 1973 work “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” Tiptree examines a futuristic society with superficial obsessions and advanced technologies. In this society, traditional advertisement is forbidden. Companies found loopholes in this ban, using celebrities dubbed “gods” to promote certain products to the crowds with their stardom. They had significant influence, whatever they used, the people desired (Tiptree 213). These gods are conceived in an elaborate manner, using lab-produced bodies (Tiptree 207) known as Remotes to keep up an aesthetically sound image while real people act as the brain controlling

One’s identity is the most important lesson to be learned. It is vital part of life knowing who you are in order to live a fulfilled life. Without knowing your identity, and the way you perceive life, it is difficult for others to understand you, along with a struggle to live a happy life. In Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar,” Esther Greenwood struggles to find her own identity, and in the process, she develops a mental illness which helps her discover the person she is on the inside.

Alice enters my office wanting to work on her anxiety and mood changes. There were some general goals aligned with her assessing a desire to be less anxious and to control sudden mood changes. She also stated she would like to turn her life around, but has no idea where to start. Alice notes she is not bleak. She has enough guts to leave a lot of her shady past behind and enrolled into college.

"American literature is male. To read the canon of what is currently considered classic American literature is perforce to identify as male; Our literature neither leaves women alone nor allows them to participate." Judith Fetterley (Walker, 171)

Character development within novels with complex plot structures proves to be a difficult task necessitating the author to add their own inner thoughts and experiences to weave a more realistic story. The historical background of a writer helps glean on information about that person’s unconscious and subconscious processes that become apparent within an author’s literature. As the author develops their thoughts throughout a novel attempting to paint a clearer picture of their purpose, their own persona becomes a part of the literature. Psychoanalytic theory attempts to further this claim by taking information from one’s childhood, inner taboo thoughts and hidden motivations, and synthesizing them for a better picture of the author’s

The experiences we have in childhood do much to shape our adult identity. In her novel Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood chronicles the life of artist Elaine Risley, and through a series of flashbacks shows the reader how she became her adult self. The retrospective showing of Elaine's artwork provides a framework for the retrospective of her journey from child to adult. Because Atwood was creating a fictional character, she was free to incorporate some very dramatic events that impacted Elaine's thoughts and feelings. Most of us do not have as much drama in our lives I certainly did not and yet the people, circumstances and occurrences in our lives affect us profoundly. We create our identity by the friends we choose, the decisions we make, and the way we respond to things that happen around us. Some things happen to us, and we also make conscious choices.

Many women writers put their best effort in giving vent to the long silence and aloofness of women which at last turned them into an insignificant being. Deep psychological study of their characters are exposed .

The first idea is that subjects are created through their “cultural meanings and practices” and that they hold many different “culturally-based sites of meaning” that each contain a “different configuration of the self,” and that also contain all the personal and societal characteristics that go along with each self (Lye 1). This idea claims that in every situation the person develops a different and separate self. This is true for a certain extent in speaking of Humbert and Lolita’s separate personas that emerge in different situations. They show different identities to the public, to each other, and to themselves.