In "My Other Self" the essayist takes the reader on a journey through a girl’s torturous emotional problems during a short period of time. The essayist believes that to each person, there is an "other self". This other self is a side of us that no else knows exists. I think it is created by the repression of our strongest emotions. The girl in the essay is at a skating rink with her friends when one of the boys expresses a personal interest in her. When he asks to walk her home, the girl’s "other self" begins to feel trapped and nervous. "...and making my other self very, very nervous. She can not bear to be held or confined." The above sentence from "My Other Self", shows how the character refers to her other self as a completely different person. She does not realize that the emotions building her other self are really just a part of her normal psyche that she has pushed aside. In the sentence, "my other self slips towards hysteria." The essayist also shows that the girls "other self" is far less composed than the self that she shows to acquaintances. Her other self is confused, and anxious to explode. In the events with the young boy eventually the girl feels overpowered by the feelings and thoughts that her "other self" is thrusting into her mind. She flees the scene - leaving the young man quite confused, as he does not know what is bothering her. When the girl flees home she is overcome with emotion, and this her parents do not understand, so she pretends that she is upset about her skates - once again not allowing the honest expression of her other self.
...en-year-old girl”. She has now changed mentally into “someone much older”. The loss of her beloved brother means “nothing [will] ever be the same again, for her, for her family, for her brother”. She is losing her “happy” character, and now has a “viole[nt]” personality, that “[is] new to her”. A child losing its family causes a loss of innocence.
...to be two different people, she constantly nags herself. “Sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes” (Carroll 16).
The narrator's life is filled with constant eruptions of mental traumas. The biggest psychological burden he has is his identity, or rather his misidentity. He feels "wearing on the nerves" (Ellison 3) for people to see him as what they like to believe he is and not see him as what he really is. Throughout his life, he takes on several different identities and none, he thinks, adequately represents his true self, until his final one, as an invisible man.
In the article Daydreams of What You’d Rather Be by Lance Morrow; a Harvard graduate who is a contributor to Time, proposes the idea that there is a distinct relationship in-between the self and the “anti-self”. He exposes this idea throughout by using different examples that involve numerous people, and also by using different comparisons to make his writing more relatable and more easily understood. The methods that Morrow uses to support the claims that he is making and to help uncover that message that is being emphasized in the article are essential to the meaning and the understanding. In Daydreams of What You’d Rather Be, Lance Morrow validates his main idea that underneath every person there is an “anti-self” that is just begging to be let out; by using examples of different people and situations, but also by using different comparisons and going as far as to explaining his true thoughts on this person that everyone has inside of them.
...cceptance in herself and through her parents. She is a young college student who has to deal with the pressures from her culture, parents, peers, and teachers. Her strength and power to be independent from her parents could not prevail, and an apology is the only thing she can offer to her parents. The speaker keeps telling herself that she is not good enough and not strong or smart enough to succeed; many people struggle with same the problem as the speaker, and it is up to the power within to overcome it .
Previously, the narrator has intimated, “She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own.” Her thoughts and emotions engulf her, but she does not “struggle” with them. They “belonged to her and were her own.” She does not have to share them with anyone; conversely, she must share her life and her money with her husband and children and with the many social organizations and functions her role demands.
“Who am I” is a question that most teens find themselves asking at some point during their adolescence. A person’s identity is not made up of just one thing it includes their religion, ethnicity, occupation, physicality, gender, and sexuality. Understanding one’s identity means to fully understand all of these completely different aspects of one self. In The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, Stephen Gordon struggles with understanding her identity and her inversion. Her physical appearance clearly has an extremely strong effect on the way she views herself. “A Curious Double Insight: ‘The Well of Loneliness’ and Native American Alternative Gender Traditions” by Tara Prince-Hughes explains that identifying as a lesbian and an invert means two completely different things. Through Native American traditions Hughes explains that Stephen’s definition of her identity resembles their two-spirit emphasis on gender rather than the lesbian emphasis on sexual desire. The article “Hall of Mirrors: Radclyffe Hall's ‘The Well of Loneliness’ and Modernist Fictions of Identity” by Laura Green discusses the struggles that Stephen faced with her inversion and how it reflected on her identity throughout the book.
In his work, Goffman explains that ‘the self’ is the result of the dramatic interaction between the actor and the audience he or she performs to. There are many aspects of how an individual performs his or her ‘self’. One of the aspects of performing the self that Goffman labels as the ‘front.’ The front involves managing the individual’s impression.
...alized that “a girl was not, as [she] had supposed, simply what [she] was; it was what [she] had to become” she was starting to admit defeat, and then finally when she begins to cry, it is here that the narrator understands that there is no escape from the pre-determined duties that go along with the passage of a child into being a girl, and a girl into a woman, and that “even in her heart. Maybe it (her understanding that conforming is unstoppable) was true”
“a person does not ‘inhabit’ a static object body but is subjectively embodied in a fluid, emergent, and negotiated process of being. In this process, body, self, and social interaction are interrelated to such an extent that distinctions between them are not only permeable and shifting but also actively manipulated and configured”
Emotional discomfort can sometimes be perceived as mental instability. A person may look, act, or feel insane, when in truth they are just very uncomfortable in their own skin. The narrator has a genuinely difficult decision to make which far outside his comfort zone. He is choosing between a woman who has been like a mother to him and much needed job that he feels he may enjoy. This choice is tearing him apart from the inside out. From the ringing noises that interrupt his every thought to the skin he is scraping off. The author uses diction, syntax, and extended metaphors to express the complete and utter discomfort of the narrator, both physically and emotionally.
In Henry James’s novel, The Portrait of a Lady, two characters, Madame Merle and Isabel Archer, discuss what constitutes the self. Madame Merle states that the things we chose to surround ourselves with, our clothes and our hobbies, are what make up one’s self. Isabel Archer states that nothing other than herself, her thoughts and feelings, expresses who she is. I agree with Isabel Archer that one should be seen for how one acts or thinks, but I also agree with Madame Merle that what we chose to surround ourselves with is an extension of oneself.
In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations which leads to a large conflict between the narrator and her mother.
When we are adolescents we see the world through our parents' eyes. We struggle to define ourselves within their world, or to even break away from their world. Often, the birth of our "self" is defined in a moment of truth or a moment of heightened self-awareness that is the culmination of a group of events or the result of a life crisis or struggle. In literature we refer to this birth of "self" as an epiphany. Alice Munro writes in "Boys and Girls" about her own battle to define herself. She is torn between the "inside" world of her mother and the "outside" world of her father. In the beginning her father's world prevails, but by the finale, her mother's world invades her heart. Although the transformation is not complete, she begins to understand and define her "self-hood."
I have met many people so far in this life, but the person I enjoy remembering the most is my husband Jeff. He was born and raised in Tennessee. He is six feet tall, weighs two hundred sixty seven pounds,he has dark brown eyes, and such a nice smile. His hair is jet black with just a few silver and white strands throughout. He is a very big and strong character of a man. And yet he is the most gentle, kind and caring man that I have ever met. Jeff has a sexy southern drawl to his voice. The one person who has influenced my life greatly is my husband, the first reason being because of his positive attitude, his intelligence, and the way he expresses his love.