...Trinity Lloyd Brady, K ENG 2D0 Thursday, December 17, 2015 Identity Crisis Your identity is what makes you the way you are. When you lose sight of your identity your beliefs and expressions are clouded, and insanity follows suit. In William Golding’s award winning novel Lord of the Flies this is revealed to the audience through multiple examples. The loss of your own identity can lead to insanity due to losing your physical identity, integrity, and accepting your true form, which Golding tells us, is insanity and savagery. To adapt to your surroundings, people usually alter or strip away their physical identity. For instance, clothes held the boys on the island to their physical identity, at first they kept them on to avoid getting sunburnt, but when they adapted to their surroundings, they strip away their clothes becoming slightly less civilized, the book states, “He [Ralph] undid the snake-clasp of his belt, lugged off his shorts and pants, and stood their naked, looking at the dazzling beach and the water” (Golding5). In society, rules were against stripping down, but since there was no authority on the island, Ralph sees no need to keep on the clothes he wore in civilization. In addition, Piggy’s glasses symbolize knowledge and reason. Physically the glasses are meant for vision, vision means sight, and sight is a metaphor for knowledge. When the glasses are broken, they are misused, no longer a symbol for knowledge and reason. “The chief led them, trotting steadily...
Words: 931 - Pages: 4
...“How do you tame a wild tongue?” Gloria Anzaldua asks. Today, we live in a society where we are stripped and torn apart by the way we act and where we come from. In the essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Anzaldua makes it known to us that the different languages and the various ways we speak is something that separates us from each other. Anzaldua chooses to focus this topic on the Spanish culture and uses her personal experience to further dive into the struggle of growing up in a place where speaking Spanish was not accepted. Early in the essay, she mentions how at a young age, she was mistreated for speaking Spanish in the classroom and was told to “go back to Mexico where [you] belong”. Because of the culture she grew up in and the language...
Words: 377 - Pages: 2
...Alexander Vega Mr. Cagley ERWC 15 December 2017 Into the Wild Final Christopher Johnson McCandless Intelligent, idealistic young man who believes that life is best lived alone, in nature. He spends two years testing his theory throughout the western United States before entering the wilds of Alaska unprepared and starving to death. At first glance It seems Chris McCandless wanted to live life in the wild, but in reality his distaste of anchoring human relationships led him to want to run on to ¨life on the road.¨ His lonesome venture was not only of self discovery, but of an outlet to be able to run from his problems. That in fact is what is meant to symbolize life on the road, and it is not meant for everyone. Throughout the novel it is...
Words: 417 - Pages: 2
...interaction with others and the world around them can limit or enrich their experience of belonging. Belonging can emerge from the connections made with people, groups or community. It is something we all feel whether we mean to or not. This belonging gives us an attachment to other people or things and we can gain other certain feelings such as security, happiness, pride, sense of value and acceptance by others as social human beings. It gives us an awareness of identity and builds our self-confidence and self-esteem as we feel part of something bigger. There are also implications for not belonging, our inability to connect can lead to isolation, alienation, vulnerability and dislocated from society. These universal experiences are explored through the poetry of Peter Skrzynecki’s “Immigrant Chronicle”, in particular, Migrant Hostel where barriers limited the migrant’s experience of belonging and Feliks Skrzynecki which portrays the father and son’s contrasting experiences to belonging in a new land. Sean Penn’s 2007 film Into the Wild also examines a person’s quest for a sense of...
Words: 1347 - Pages: 6
...the difficulties students have at school and at home when it comes down to learning a language which they aren’t acquainted to and the consequences of such, depending on their social background. Reflection on readings using Comparison and Contrast Maxine Hong Kingston (Tongue Tied); Richard Rodriguez (Aria); Gloria Anzaldua (How to Tame a Wild Tongue) In the short story’s ‘Tongue Tied’, ‘Aria’ and ‘How to Tame a Wild Tongue’, written by Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Rodriguez and Gloria Anzaldua respectively, each author interrelates the issue of bilingualism and bi-culturalism as a personal, narrative-style, life experience. Their personal experience all share the same setting; them during childhood deprived of speaking their own language, struggling to get through school and get accepted in the American society and the impact on their lives as a result of such pressure. When comparing the short stories, it is clear that each individual writer share several aspects in common, as well as differences. One of the most recurring aspects that each author conveys in their short story is the notion of one’s self recognition – identity – as a child which they do not recognise when they are at school; in America. H. Kingston is Chinese, whilst Rodriguez is Mexican and Anzaldua is of Spanish origins. An example in ‘Aria’ is when Rodriguez says: “…I easily noted the difference between classroom language and the language of home” (286). Here, Rodriguez is emphasizing on the fact...
Words: 1350 - Pages: 6
...Conrad Jorge November 21, 2010 Identity after Traumatic Experiences Most of us have experienced or seen the effects of trauma, whether we experienced it first hand or though a shared experience that struck close to home. Trauma is unavoidable, the result of experiencing something that is too difficult to cope with. In “Selections from Losing Matt Shepard”, Beth Loffreda discusses the murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie Wyoming and it’s traumatic effect on the university and community as a whole. She focuses heavily on the idea of identity, both that of the individual and the shared identity of the community after the traumatic event of his death. Trauma is of particular interest to Martha Stout, author of “When I Woke up on Tuesday, It was Friday”. She questions idea of sanity and whether we can truly call ourselves sane. She uses examples of her patients to discuss the effects of trauma on a person’s memory, feelings, and ultimately their identity. In “Into the Wild”, Jon Krakauer implies some of these same concepts with the story of Chris Candles and his travels in the Alaskan wilderness. Through out the story Chris seems to be searching for his own identity and seemingly trying to cope with damage and after effects of childhood trauma. Trauma as personally experienced or shared through a community causes a disconnection between individual and shared identity, significantly damaging and profoundly affecting our self and shared perceptions, feelings, and opinions of ourselves...
Words: 2010 - Pages: 9
...The Personal is Still the Political “Anything you can do I can do better; I can do anything better than you” (Berlin). These iconic lyrics were part of a cheerful duet in a 1940’s Broadway musical making jest that a woman could compete against a man in various tasks such as singing and archery. Little did society know that women truly believed that this was the case, and it was an idea worth fighting for. Over the course of the twentieth-century, women have fought and protested for equality among men in a male-dominate society. Women have rallied under one of the best known slogans of the movement the “personal is political”, the concept that the personal (private) life should be addressed equally with the public (political) life that had yet to integrate women into its realm. “the personal is political refers to the private life or “realm” of women having anything to do with marriage, children or household roles and the public realm of men having anything to do with business, politics, art, or sports. Renowed poet and writer Gloria Anzaldua has her own interpretation of what the “personal is political” means and what she was challenging specifically when she argued using her own experiences such as the loss of culture through the loss of language, and sexism in language as a starting point. “The personal is political” played a very significant role in helping shape the women’s rights movement from its roots all the way to its end in the 1960’s with the advent of the Civil...
Words: 1679 - Pages: 7
...Through most of history, names have had the power to determine the identity of a person, place, or object. For instance, the narrator in the excerpt of The House on Mango Street has an internal struggle concerning her identity because of her complex attitude towards her name. In Cisernos’ excerpt My Name, she utilizes literary devices such as attitude and, diction, and figurative language to convey that a name and its origin do not dictate a person’s future. The Cisneros manipulates diction and figurative language to convey Esperanza’s attitude toward her name. In particular, Cisneros starts the excerpt with positive connotation, “In English my name means hope,” however, she switches to negative connotation in the next sentence in order to criticize her name, “In Spanish it means...
Words: 579 - Pages: 3
...The description of Chris Mccandless, according to some, is that of a mad lunatic because of his outlandish actions displayed in Jon Krakauer’s “Into The Wild”. However, there are a few people who understand and show sympathy for McCandless’s view. An example of an individual that shares the same thrill as McCandless is the author himself. Similarities between Krakauer and McCandless mirror in their parental situations as well as their love for exploration into the unknown. These two individuals will demonstrate the struggle with family and identity that society has a hard time accepting. Family and society take a toll on both McCandless and Krakauer, because their fathers demand so much from them, wanting them to exceed the legacy that they have established. While investigating into McCandless’s odyssey, Krakauer starts to reflect on his own personal life,“But i believe we were similarly affected by the skewed relationships we had with our fathers....
Words: 474 - Pages: 2
...tailored views on linguistic identity in her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”. As a child growing up in south Texas to Mexican immigrant parents, Anzaldua found herself questioning her teacher’s unfair treatment of Spanish speakers at her school. Her essay continues by dissecting her problem of creating a self-identity through language in a suffocating Anglo-Saxon environment. Anzaldua’s main claim is that the strength of her Chicano roots over power any attempt to uproot her linguistic culture. Anzaldua’s self-identity is shaped through language by her writing style, evidence of robbed freedom and strong culture. In order to properly analyze Anzaldua’s text I will examine her use of language. After reading her essay it is evident that she manipulates her use of English and Spanish in order to raise a reaction from her reader. Linguistic use also drives home her thesis of a strong culture shaping self-identity. The next top of dissection will be Anzaldua’s person identity. As a feminist, she definitely uses language as a tool to express who she is as a person. She feels as though language robs her of her freedom to completely express herself. Lastly, I will examine the magnitude of Chicano culture. Much like a magnetic pull, Spanglish draw’s its culture participants in and gives the speakers an ultimatum: either speak Spanish or be considered a traitor. Each of the topics are thread that weave together to create Anzaldua’s essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”. The most visible...
Words: 635 - Pages: 3
...Humans have idolized animals since the beginning of mankind, from the royal cats of Egypt to the beastial zodiacs of China. Most cultures cherish animals and appreciate them for what they provide for its people. The Laguna tribe has a deep respect for the natural world, and this respect can be seen through the way they interact with nature. There is, however, a culture which threatens the relationship between man and animal, American culture. Americans have lost their regard for nature, and in doing so they may have lost a crucial part of their identity. These two ways of life are starkly different and Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko illustrates the contrast of the cultures interacting with the world around them. The Laguna tribe’s core belief...
Words: 1016 - Pages: 5
...GLORIA ANZALDUA How to Tame a Wild Tongue Gloria Anzaldua was born in 1942 in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. At age eleven. she began working in the fields as a migrant worker and then on her family's land after the death of her father. Working her way through school, she eventually became a schoolteacher and then an academic, speaking and writing about feminis t, lesbian, and Chicana issues and about autobiography. She is best known for This Bridge CalJed My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color ( 1981), which she edited with Cherrie Moraga, and BorderlandsfLa Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). Anzaldua died in 2004. "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" is from BorderlandsfLa Frontera. In it, Anzaldua is concerned with many kinds of borders - between nations, cultures, classes, genders, languages. When she writes, "So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language" (par. 27), Anzaldua is arguing for the ways in which identity is intertwined with the way we speak and for the ways in which people can be made to feel ashamed of their own tongues. Keeping hers wild - ignoring the closing of linguistic borders - is Anzaldua's way of asserting her identity. "We're going to have to control your tongue," the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a motherlode.· The dentist is cleaning out my roots. I get a whiff of the stench when I gasp. "I can't cap that tooth yet, you're still draining," he...
Words: 4793 - Pages: 20
...Identity and the Meaning of Life Identity is a very important part of everybody. It defines who you are, what you think and what you believe in. Nobody has the same identity. To some people it is easy to find out who they are, but to others it is a long journey which includes things that most people do not try during their lives, for example to leave the civilization and live alone in the woods without any material advantages. A: “Into the Wild” by Sean Penn is about a boy called Chris. After his graduation he leaves his family to travel around on his own. Chris leaves because he cannot stand the focus on material advantages, and he also wants to run away from the dark secrets his parents have kept from him his whole life. Just like the character in Thoreau’s text “Walden”, Chris goes into the wild to get away from society and to live deliberately. Both of them want to get back to basics and away from materialism. The film is very critical towards society, and especially Chris’s parents try to make it look like everything is good on the outside even though the family is falling apart. The parents are not happy, but they stay together anyway because they are afraid of the opinions of other people. This is also a trace of the Puritain legacy where divorces were not accepted. The focus on the opinion of other people comes across in the first part of the film when Chris still is at home and his parents want to give him a new car because the other one is a wreck. The parents...
Words: 1216 - Pages: 5
...LIBERTY UNIVERSITY ONLINE Biblical Worldview AN ESSAY SUBMITTED TO PROFESSOR LARRY BROWN BIBL105-B13 OLD TESTAMENT SURVEY BY CAR FEBRUARY 2015 Since I first started reading the Bible I have looked at the first 11 chapters of Genesis as merely a historical text to tell how God created the world, His grace, His love, His justice and His Holiness. However after reading it with an eye toward how it influences my world view and how I see the natural world, the human identity, human relationships and civilization I see there is a wealth of information overlooked in most people’s basic understanding of what could be considered the most important 11 chapters in the Bible. As we see from the beginning of the Book of Genesis a triune God created the entire natural world and all living things in six days. According to Moses writing he meant six twenty-four hour periods, this is based on the fact Moses used the word “Yom” for day in this book. “Yom” as used in other parts of the Bible refers to a day as a twenty-four hour period by this we can be sure Moses wasn’t referring to a day as some other period of time. Based on this God is showing us we are to work six days and rest on the seventh or Sabbath as seen in Genesis 2:2-3 (NIV) “Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” These first 11 chapters also show us the fallacy in evolution as the Bible clearly states He created all living things...
Words: 1090 - Pages: 5
...“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”: Shaping Identity By April 16 2012 Powell Texts and Contexts 16 April 2012 “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”: Shaping Identity The first scene of James Joyce’s novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” presents the protagonist, as a child then as a young man. This scene condenses the journey by foreshadowing the challenges the protagonist will experience leading to him becoming the artist he was meant to be: we are introduced to three major forces that shape his identity and thoughts; Irish Nationalism, Catholic Identity, and sensitivity. James Joyce’s choice of Dublin, Ireland at the end of the 19th century as the setting is critical for this novel. Ireland was experiencing oppression and reform from their conquerors, the British. The political dimension of this time period is introduced using the implications of song. The music is used to represent the struggle for Irish independence which is a consistent theme throughout the novel. The song begins with “O, the wild rose blossoms”; when a plant is wild it is often growing rampant implying that it is an unwelcome weed in an environment that is not its own. Suffocating all other life “on the little green place” which is Ireland. The song ends with Stephen pondering “O, the green wothe botheth”; if the rose were green instead of red implying Irish independence however, still saying the rose is still a rose regardless of the color. This could mean that even if the Irish...
Words: 813 - Pages: 4
