A simple glance around the crowded facility in which I am currently sitting renders a flood of images into my mind. If we speak of identities, my current location is not insufficient in provision. Many students, all ambitious and hopeful, come together to create a conglomeration of identities.
Each one of us, no matter the race, age, or gender, is born into a certain identity. Each has his or her own physical appearance and stereotypical composure. However, identity in the truest sense is one that we create for ourselves; an opportunity to transcend the identity with which we are born.There are many examples of this in literature both old and new. For example, in the classic Jane Eyre, Jane is raised as a timid girl, shadowed by her cousins and villifying aunt, only to be sent away to boarding school, where uniformity was encouraged and free-flying ideas scorned.
Had Jane simply decided to adhere to this “identity” shoved upon her, she would not have been able to grow and mature as a person. Thankfully for Jane, she decided to break free of this norm and embark on her own search for understanding and identity, eventually changing her views and morphing into a grown woman worth of the elusive title of a classic heroine.Modern literature is not scarce in example either. In a novel titled Scribbler of Dreams, Kate’s identity is that of a Malone, the family that the Crutchfields, their distant relatives, despite with all the loathing worth of generations upon generations of malice between the two.
Much to Kate’s dismay, she finds herself in love wiht Bram Crutchfield. Family squabbles have lent prejudice to Bram’s faction, however, and Kate’s single struggle is to break free of the typical Malone identity and show Bram that he should love her for who she really is.Through a series of events, Kate learns important lessons that developer her own new character and identity by allowing herself to expand beyond what was “expected” of a Malone, to learn to love an enemy, and to further her own morals and beliefs. All these pieces create hte “new” Kate that can be viewed ultimately with admiration and reverence. As a Chinese-American, I too was born into a community that only seemed to know how to assign identities as if passing out uniforms. “You are expected to be a great virtuoso.
” “You will excel in mathematics. ” Tired of being restrained to these typical activities and personalities, I created my own nventory of ideals and interests. Perhaps I may not be the perfect fit to the generic mold from which I was birthed - my grades are lessthan-perfect and I do not win national piano competitions - but I am proud that I was able to take my life into my own artisan hands and shape my own life by instigating memorable experiences, making choices for what I truly believe in, being ambitious, and most of all, for learning that identities are something that we can all break free of, to don our own handmade wings - gathered from experiences, trial, error, and success - and soar to the place we know we belong
