Surroundings

The environment in which an individual grows up in can affect one’s life greatly. Surroundings influence personality, self-expression, and individuality, otherwise known as identity. Finding one’s true self is the most grueling stage of life and will not always coincide with the hopes and expectations of others. Pressure to change and reform will always be present from family, friends, and society, but one cannot let outside stress affect inside feelings because that gives up the ability of control. The control to make decisions, determine the future, and find identity. When one is caught between family and self, complications and questions will arise. Evidently, everyone wants to know the precise plan for the future, especially family.

The hunt for identity becomes prominent while the actual search for the pet is left in the shadows. The narrator struggles with her own conscience and emotions, battling “lots of noise, but noise that’s hard to hear” (Ehrlich 260). This noise is hard to hear because the narrator is deaf to reality. Dazed and confused, she has become lost in the idea of becoming and having more. In her life, “nothing is enough” (Ehrlich 261) and she strives for the unreachable. As the narrator assures, “I’m filled with longings… for what is impossible” (Ehrlich 261). When walking “with a purpose but no destination” only then does she “see, at least momentarily, that everything is” there (Ehrlich 261). The narrator realizes it is the journey and not the destination that matters. When the end will come, one cannot foretell, but the journey along the way can be planned. The narrator gives up her control to the unknown and accepts the fact that an ongoing search for identity may be okay.
The need for the end does not make the journey any less important. Sometimes the stages and obstacles one overcomes actually reveal the destination. In “Looking for a Lost Dog”, “Digging”, and Persepolis, all the main characters embark on a journey to find their true identity. Maneuvering self-doubt, facing society, and breaking from family all broke open the self-expression that has been suppressed for so long. However, the arrival to identity is not what shapes them, it is the acceptance of unknown and the lack of control that ironically pushes them