Performed Identities: A Means to an End
Performed identities exist primarily due to the fact that people are simply unable to attain or achieve a certain power, wealth, or escape through a natural means within their true identity. These performed identities allow people to accomplish the difficult task of cutting through social boundaries. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story, “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, Neville St. Clair skips over social boundaries as a middle-class, ex-reporter living the performed identity as a rich upper-class gentleman. In his daily routine, St. Clair leaves behind his family and the norms of an upper class life each morning to take on a detestable alter-identity as Hugh Boone, a beggar and match salesman. Often times in the presence of a single performed identity, a second may be created in response to the first. St. Clair's first, very private performed identity is that of Boone the beggar, which in turn leads him to the accidental creation of St. Clair, the very public English gentleman. While St. Clair skips up over social boundaries between middle and upper-class, he must then leap down over the boundaries from his upper class lifestyle to gain the wealth only made possible with makeup and the ragged clothing of Boone.
At first glance, it appears that St. Clair has only one performed identity, that of Boone the beggar, however upon further examination one can observe that there is another performed identity, that of St. Clair the upper-class businessman. St. Clair, in his natural identity as a reporter is caught in the middle between these two polar extreme identities. St. Clair worked as a reporter for the evening paper in London for which he was assigned to write on begging in the metropo...
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...ddle class reporter up to a powerful and wealthy man. However, through the process he must take a very large step down in order to take an even larger step up within society.
Performed identities are things not limited to tales of fiction. Every day, they manifest themselves based on what we have to gain from certain situations. Doyle uses this story to address the issue and bring to light the fact that performed identities exist within each of us. For Neville St. Clair, it was a path to a better life. For you or I, it can be as small as making a better first impression at a party by elevating ourselves beyond who we really are. Performed identities do not have to be complex, well thought out or long-lasting. Through a degree of deception, large or small, they create in all of us an ability to achieve something otherwise not attainable within our natural self.
Everyone at some point is bound to experience situations where they question who they really are. This conflict usually arises as a result of either another’s actions or one’s own actions. In the short story “On the Sidewalk Bleeding”, Andy struggles with his self-identity. Furthermore, the barber in “Just Lather, That’s All”, battles with his abilities and image of himself. Therefore, both the barber and Andy face an inner conflict as a result of their struggle of determining who they genuinely are, which conclusively results in how their future will unfold.
In John Perry’s “dialogue on personal identity and immorality”, Dave Cohen and Sam Miller visit Gretchen Weirob in the hospital because of Weirob’s injury in a motorcycle accident, they raise a discussion on personal identity. Cohen later takes up issues raised in the case where Julia’s brain is taken from her deteriorated body and placed on the healthy body of Mary whose brain has been destroyed. Therefore Mary has her own body with Julia’s memory and personality. The case proposes an argument
Taylor, S. (2009) ‘Who We Think We Are? Identities in Everyday life’, in Taylor, S., Hinchliffe, S., Clarke, J. and Bromley, S. (eds), Making Social Lives, Milton Keynes, The Open University.
According to the Merriam Webster, identity is the “sameness of essential or generic character in different instances” (Merriam Webster). An identity can be the qualities or beliefs that make a person different from another, but it is also the thing that connects them. A man’s identity stays with him “for the rest of his life” and is something that “[can] not change much” (O’Hara 202, 193). Identity is who one is born to, what one thinks, what one says, and what one does; John O’Hara and F. Scott Fitzgerald both utilize the theme of identity in describing the lives and actions of the central characters Julian English and Dick Diver in their novels, Appointment in Samarra and Tender is the Night. Discovering their individual identities is a journey for both men, and on their journey to self-discovery the men believe that by fixing their lives they will discover their identity. Both Julian and Dick struggle to maintain perfect order in their lives by controlling fate, but their ancestral obligations lead to self-destruction and inevitable downfall. While Diver commits social suicide, English commits actual suicide, and the two seal their fates the second they try to change their journey. Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus complex is a feeling of sexual attracting of a child toward their parent; the fixation towards one’s father or mother can lead to choices of sexual partners or spouses that resemble the parent. The wives of Julian English and Dick Diver, Caroline and Nicole, marry their husbands because of their fatherly personas, and Caroline and Nicole’s own incestuous pasts shape and control their relationships with Julian and Dick. The superficiality of English and Diver and their inability to realize who they are lead to a need to contro...
The narrative causes questions to arise about whether or not an identity is represented by a name or something more emotional-a trait tha...
“ People are not meant to be defined, words are.” This corresponds with the meaning of an identity. A person’s identity cannot be expressed correctly through a story, but it can be portrayed through ones actions. Judging, Being Prejudice and Racism are the building structures to a stereotype. This also correlates to dangers of a single story. After one is able to get passed the thought and idea that is impossible to sum up a person in just a few words, they are able to come to a resolution, which is finding ones identity.
W.D. Valgardson’s, “Identities,” is a shocking, ironic short story that follows the misadventure of a lost man in search of a new identity. Valgardson utilizes dramatic and situational irony in the events of the story to develop the theme: people are often predisposed to passing judgement based on appearance rather than fact. The dramatic irony unfolds throughout the story with the police officer who is suspicious of the protagonist and pursues him. Guilt-ridden and anxious to return home after losing himself in a rougher part of town, the man searches for the nearest phone, oblivious of the police car that “nose[s] out and follows” him. The police officer’s quick judgement of the protagonist emphasizes the theme of how people often judge others
In Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the protagonist, Jane, gives an account of her current depression-stricken state that seems to be misunderstood by those close to her. The story is written in a journal-like style from a first person point of view. Jane, suffering from a sort of illness—which she believes others have belittled to nervous depression—has been given strict orders to do nothing in an attempt to cure her sickness. Although her physician husband, John, seems to take care of her by providing a stay at a summer vacation home, she begins to resent him and sees him as imprisoning. She hides her thoughts from him and uses a secret journal as an escape to express her true feelings. At first, Jane hates the yellow wallpaper in her room; but after spending many hours in isolation there, the yellow wallpaper begins to fascinate Jane. Soon, it dominates her thinking and she becomes unusually obsessed with it, identifying with the woman in the wallpaper who seems to be trapped. Eventually, Jane becomes extremely crazy and although she wants to gain freedom, the story ends with her being trapped more than ever by her own crazed state of mind. Throughout the story, the author incorporates literary elements such as irony, imagery, and symbolism to help the reader understand and identify with Jane.
Sir Robert Chiltern is a man who has invented a life for himself. He reveals this aspect of his personality as he says, “I had the double misfortune of being well-born and poor, two unforgivable things these days.” (Act 2; 23) Robert did not come from an old, wealthy family. Thus, he acquired the drive and ambition that poverty demands and that his social and professional circles lack. Other characters in the play view Robert as the ideal: a perfectly well-respected man with a clean slate. Little do they know, the skeleton in Sir Robert’s closet is the origin of his success. In his youth, he received nefarious advice from a mentor, and therefore came to possess a la...
In life someone’s identity are change by the events that happen in their lifetime or their actions. In the book, “Night,” by Elies Wisesl tells the story of the events of the Holocaust that happen to the Jews in Sighet. The Jews were once living their life like everyone else, until the events of the Holocaust destroyed it. The Jews were stripped of everything by the Nazi that made up their identity. They were treated so bad to the point that it seem unreal to those who didn’t experience it. The Jews that were involved in the events of the Holocaust, their identities were affected and change .
The themes of identity and intimacy were difficult to define when analyzing the social dynamic between African Americans and White Americans. When evaluating their interactions with one another, it was interesting to observe the many complexities of human beings. Slavery created the need for identification. As the slave trade increased, ethnic sub groups’ exposure to one another and to Europeans resulted in the reinterpretation and acculturation of cultures. Identity persisted as an entity of importance from the African-based communities to their descendants as identification could emancipate black slaves from the shackles of slavery. Even though slavery was a shared success for global markets, the relationship between slaves and slaveholders
... to have a dual identity in Victorian society. Through Dr. Jekyll stevenson shows how a dual identity can become the tragedy of a person's life, while Wilde shows that it is not as opposite or far fetch from one's true identity. Perhaps, human nature is made up of two sides and restriction in one's life may trigger one to create a second identity, whether it is to escape the responsabilities of one's life or even to walk into the dark side and go as far as commiting a crime that will take over on'es true identity forever.
There are millions of words across the globe that are used to describe people and uncover their identity, but what is identity? How can you begin to describe something that varies so greatly from one human being to another? Can you create a universal meaning for a word describing human concepts that people often fail to define for themselves? Of course there isn't one definition to define such a word. It is an intricate aspect of human nature, and it has a definition just as complex.
Identity is a state of mind in which someone recognizes/identifies their character traits that leads to finding out who they are and what they do and not that of someone else. In other words it's basically who you are and what you define yourself as being. The theme of identity is often expressed in books/novels or basically any other piece of literature so that the reader can intrigue themselves and relate to the characters and their emotions. It's useful in helping readers understand that a person's state of mind is full of arduous thoughts about who they are and what they want to be. People can try to modify their identity as much as they want but that can never change. The theme of identity is a very strenuous topic to understand but yet very interesting if understood. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez and Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki are two remarkable books that depict the identity theme. They both have to deal with people that have an identity that they've tried to alter in order to become more at ease in the society they belong to. The families in these books are from a certain country from which they're forced to immigrate into the United States due to certain circumstances. This causes young people in the family trauma and they must try to sometimes change in order to maintain a comfortable life. Both authors: Alvarez and Houston have written their novels Is such an exemplifying matter that identity can be clearly depicted within characters as a way in adjusting to their new lives.
The narrator thinks the many identities he possesses does not reflect himself, but he fails to recognize that identity is simply a mirror that reflects the surrounding and the person who looks into it. It is only in this reflection of the immediate surrounding can the viewers relate the narrator's identity to. The viewers see only the part of the narrator that is apparently connected to the viewer's own world. The part obscured is unknown and therefore insignificant. Lucius Brockway, an old operator of the paint factory, saw the narrator only as an existence threatening his job, despite that the narrator is sent there to merely assist him. Brockway repeatedly question the narrator of his purpose there and his mechanical credentials but never even bother to inquire his name. Because to the old fellow, who the narrator is as a person is uninterested. What he is as an object, and what that object's relationship is to Lucius Brockway's engine room is important. The narrator's identity is derived from this relationship, and this relationship suggests to Brockway that his identity is a "threat". However the viewer decides to see someone is the identity they assign to that person. The Closing of The American Mind, by Allan Bloom, explains this identity phenomenon by comparing two "ships of states" (Bloom 113). If one ship "is to be forever at sea, [and] ¡K another is to reach port and the passengers go their separate ways, they think about one another and their relationships on the ship very differently in the two cases" (Bloom 113).