“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ” Oscar Wilde Society tries to drive individuals through the roads it wishes to travel, and to the destiny it wishes to arrive.
Throughout the course of life, each individual must endure the struggle of surviving the massacre of personalities and the abduction of identities that occur within today’s civilization. If one does not behave as the others do, they may end up being criticized or left behind by the others.Fitting in is the most important thing to accomplish, even if it means to lose one’s identity in the way of getting it. This situation is exemplified in the two works of literature “Greasy Lake” by T.
C. Boyle and “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy. In these two stories, it can be seen how society is constantly trying to shape the people to act alike, having no own personality; and look alike, changing their own images to mimic another. Although both stories share the same theme of the individual versus the society, they present two different outcomes it can result: overcoming the pressure or succumbing to it.“Greasy Lake” was written by the author T.
C. Boyle and published in the 1985 in the work “Greasy Lake and Other Stories”. In this short story the author tells how three young men behave rebellious just because that is how others behave. This shows how society influences in the way people act. It “was a time when courtesy and winning ways went out of style, when it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste” (Boyle 365), the narrator expressed.
Instead of saying we felt like acting like this, he clearly stated this is what other people thought was good and therefore they should do it.Even more, at the moment of explaining why they were going to the lake he said “because everyone went there” (Boyle 365). That is exactly what happens nowadays. Young people litter their lives with alcohol, sex and violence, just to follow the trends. The media loads people’s minds with useless shows such as Jackass or Jersey Shore, teaching new generations that not caring about the future and just “living the moment” is what is important. However, there are some individuals that do care about it, but have to hide themselves under a mask to not be humiliated.
In the same story, the protagonist shows signs of being this type of person. Occasionally, he makes reference of literature work and author he has read, such as “The Naked and the Dead” (Boyle 370) and Anne Frank (Boyle 369). He had not been in a fight since sixth grade; and while he was thinking of what lie to tell his parents for what has happened to the car, he thought of “vandals had got to it while we were playing chess at Digby’s. ” What bad guy would read novels, fought only once in his life and played chess?This young man was obviously an immature teenager looking for the attention of his friends and the other teenagers. In addition of shaping people’s behavior, society builds up standards for appearance and beauty.
Especially for women, a perfect image is praised and idolized above all other virtue. From their early years to their last years, women live thinking less of themselves because their bodies did not grow up to satisfy society’s expectations. Marge Piercy in her work “Barbie Doll” tells the story of one of the many girls that is teased for not having the “super-model” features.From back to Piercy’s generation to these days, Barbie have represented the woman little girls aspire to be. However, this doll is as perfect as it is unreal. This doll would be five feet tall with 36”x24”x36 breast, waist and hips sizes respectively (Vincent 7).
These measurements are not only not naturally found, but they would be of an anorexic woman if found in reality (Evans 7). In addition, inner beauty is ignored and often denigrated. In the second stanza, Piercy states: “She was healthy, tested intelligent,/ Possessed strong arms and back,/ Abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.She went to and fro apologizing.
/ Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs” (7-11). In these lines it can be clearly seen that the girl from the story is gifted with talents and health. This is rarely appreciated by society. Instead, she felt guilty for being who she was and for having the intelligence and abilities but lacking the beauty they wanted (Milne 34).
In the line: “Everybody saw a fat nose on thick legs”, the author shows how people tend to care less about how the other people truly are and care more about their physical appearance.“Exercise, diet, smile and wheedle” (Piercy 14) these are the four pillars on which the twisted vision of the perfect woman rest on. Social pressure, manipulated media and other’s people expectations shapes human personality and can either destroy it or enhance it. In one of her interviews, Piercy said “We are influenced by the place, the place enters us, the era shapes us, what we think we are becomes an establishment” (qtd. in Vincent 9) Certainly, humans cannot escape from the influence of others, and this influence will most of the time tend to take over control and shape everybody in image of the common.It is in the breaking of these chains that imprisons identity, however, that humans truly find themselves and strengthen their own personality.
Taking the narrator of Greasy Lake as an example, after his horrible experience, he discovers what could happen to him if he continued to behave in such way. In the sentence “my car was wrecked, he was dead” (Boyle 371), he understands that he was lucky the car was the one damaged, but in another scenario, he could have been the one floating in the lake’s water.After this epiphany, he changes his point of view, to the point of denying the offer of hanging out with attractive women, the same thing they were looking for in the first place. However, this is not always the case, as Piercy’s poem exemplifies, that good nature can wore out (16) and people end up offering up their true selves to society. In these situations, the soul is killed inside the body, and the only thing left is the outside and superficial image of what society believes must be.This is described in the poem with a hyperbole of the girl dying “with the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on,/ a turned-up nose,/ dressed in a pink and white nightie.
”(Piercy 20-22). Although physical death is not always the destiny of the girls that go through plastic surgery, this example demonstrates that something dies in this process, whether it is the body or the essence person. Moreover, is not until she superficially changes that society starts to recognize her. In the end, the girl reaches perfection in exchange of her own life.
These stereotypes of how people should behave and how people should look, influence humanity as a whole and leads the individual to constantly redefine itself. Some follow what the mass establishes to be right, and some define their own paths through life. Shown in the story “Greasy Lake” is the example of culture and society shaping the behavior of the youth. In the same way, “Barbie Doll” shows how it tries to impose a beauty prototype into new generation. While some will follow what the mass establishes to be right, some will define their own paths through life and make their uniqueness shine through.
