You Disappearing Short Story

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Recommended: Strengths and limitations of social identity theory

Social identity, a powerful driving force in human beings, develops early in life and strengthens throughout adulthood based on chosen roles. In the short story “You, Disappearing” by Alexandra Kleeman, the main character struggles to understand her former boyfriend’s need to maintain his social identity while struggling to find hers in a new reality. As things start to disappear in the apocalypse, her former boyfriend chooses the consistency and predictability of maintaining his position as an architect. However, she regresses and has become depressed trying to live her life without structure. This conflict within the main character seems to distract her from making a plan for when the end arrives. By giving the main character a real human emotion to a disaster scenario, can this help relate the story to readers on a personal level? The way people react to disasters may not always act …show more content…

In doing so, the author can give real emotions to a character that will help portray their personality. In the short story “You, Disappearing,” the author reveals the personality and inner conflict of the main character by showing her dependence and attachment to her former boyfriend she’s moved away from. However, by using a first person narrative, the author gives the reader little outside knowledge of the character’s true personality and the reader must make this determination based solely on what the character says or does. What highlights her uncertainty and lack of self identity as the story progresses is how she ponders her old relationship and does not have a plan for the end of the world. In this situation, an example of her instability shows when she recalls how “[he was] the sort of person that [kept] it all going, and [she] was the other kind” (You, Disappearing). Furthermore, this seemed to conflict her and was something that compelled her to move

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