Room Emma Donoghue Essay

Identity, the reality of being who or what a being is, however who establishes that? A novel by Toni Morrison, Sula, is a magnificent story about identity. Sula is about two inseparable young ladies “Nel and Sula” trying to find their place in this world,though as they age, they distance. What makes you, you? Who or what gives you a place in this world? How does one know if they have an identity or not? Your identity is established by you, however what if you aren’t yourself, but a part of someone else.

Everyone in the world has their own identity but some are still searching for it. Many base their identity on race, religion, culture and language because it’s easier to belong to a certain group. However, there are some people who struggle with finding where they belong. For instance, James McBride in The Color of Water wonders who he is through most his childhood and some of his adult life. Mcbride tries to find himself by learning about his mother's background. After evaluating his mom’s past,culture and race his own issues with himself were made clearer because now he finally knows where he came from.

What is identity? Is it something you are born with? Is it something you become? Can it change? In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, we watch Junior Spirit, the main character, take a journey in order to discover who he is. Junior is a boy living on the Spokane Reservation in Washington, who decides to attend a white high school, Reardan, in order to hold onto his dreams and create opportunities for himself. But, as the book progresses, Junior struggles between his two identities: an Indian on the reservation and a white student at Reardan. It takes many events, which seem to force Junior to choose a side, and several tragic deaths of Junior’s family, which drive him into grief and hopelessness, in order

Jacks ineffective ability to think of another person’s feelings reflects on the people that surround him. This all changes when Jacks diagnosis of a tumor on his larynx turns him into the patient. His long waits in the waiting room and endless paperwork cause him to be frustrated. He is now the person needing empathy. Although he is a doctor at the very hospital where he receives treatment, he begins to see first-hand how his lack of empathy towards people and patients can make a person feel.

One’s identity is the most important part about them. Without one’s identity, there is nothing about them that makes them who they are. This is why the struggle to find one’s identity is one of the hardest struggles to take place within someone. Because the struggle to find one’s identity can be so difficult, a lot of writers today have used this motif in their books, as this has become a topic many readers can relate to. A book that highlights this topic very much is “The House on Mango Street”, by Sandra Cisneros. This book is about a young girl named Esperanza, who moves to a new house and a new community, and struggles with finding her identity and fitting in the community. The book is written in a series of vignettes, or small poems

Jack is used as an example to demonstrate the negativity in humans. When the book begins, Jack is found with the group of choir boys who were also affected in the plane crash. Jack joins the group along with Ralph and Piggy to create a tiny

Despite being a very diverse literature genre in terms of influence and inspiration, North American literature encompasses many works that share some very common thematic elements. Though there are several themes shared, one in particular can be found in most any work – the importance of identity. Particularly in some selected pieces yet to be named, identity is a very important element, not only because it is a necessity for a main character in any work of literature, but because these works express ideas about identity as being very individualistic – as opposed to being a mere result of cultural surroundings. Zora Neal Hurtson’s Their

Individuals often find the definition of identity complex and difficult to comprehend. A balance must be struck between the contending concepts that a person’s identity is founded on how they view themselves, or how others perceive them to be. During the 20th century, strict adherence to archetypal roles was expected. Who an individual was, how they interacted with others, and their status in society, was determined through the judgement of others and subsequently, the archetypal roles they were placed in. For Stephen, a young fifteen year-old who is struggling on achieving true self-fulfillment in a society that is male dominated, he drives his sense of identity and self-perception from how others see him.

Over the course of your life, you come to struggle with the philosophical idea of personal identity; the thing that makes you, you. Oneself may shape their identity around aspects of their life that they have no control over like race and physical traits, as well as decisions that are made throughout their lives like affiliations and religion. Your personal identity can be seen through your passions and interactions with others. An individual’s search for their identity is something that may occur in everyone’s’ life. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie highlights the theme of how the search for identity is always prevalent, through the conflicted characters of Junior and Mary throughout the novel.

A main theme in this novel is the influence of family relationships in the quest for individual identity. Our family or lack thereof, as children, ultimately influences the way we feel as adults, about ourselves and

Throughout the events that take place in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders Ponyboy Curtis experiences an identity crisis and three of the four identity statuses. At the very end of the book he shows signs that he is beginning to resolve his identity crisis in a more positive way, but it is not shown. Identity development is one of the most crucial stages of adolescence. Failure to fully resolve the adolescent identity crisis can have both short and long term consequences. In the case of Ponyboy, his lack of resolution to the identity crisis led to problems in school and with his family. A persons’ identity is the self-definition of who and what they are. It is based on the sum of persons’ life experiences and is comprised of their self-conceptions, self-esteem, socioeconomic status, life chances, and personality factors. All of these parts can come together during the identity crisis to form a stable and healthy identity.

Almost all teens experience some sort of an identity crisis. They struggle with finding a clearer sense of themselves. Arnold Spirit Jr., a 14-year-old reservation Indian, faces an identity crisis when he leaves his reservation to go to school in Reardan, a town inhibited by white people. To begin, Arnold moves between different settings, and when he does, there is a change in his identity. Moreover, there is a change in his character as he moves between cities. Finally, Arnold experiences an identity crisis as well as conflicts with his community. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the author uses literary elements to emphasize that one’s racial and ethnic identity changes depending on the social surrounding.

Every object that exists in the room starts with a capital letter as the idea of millions of objects existing in the world is inconceivable to Jack. It is evident that the capitalization of each word signifies Jack’s intimate relationship with the objects and even refers to them as ‘he’ and ‘she’. Lise Eliot describes Genie, a child who grew up in captivity, to “Barely be able to walk, could not focus her eyes and was incapable of speaking or understanding language” (Eliot). This is a more severe case of what Jack experiences, but describes how Jack’s confinement and non-existent relationship with society impact his development. Jack’s naïve mind interprets wrongful meanings of inanimate objects deterring his ability to form proper sentences or identify pronouns, just as Genie. In a like manner, since Jack identifies the room as the universe, he is unable to comprehend the difference between reality and television. The television in their room is the only identification of real life but Jack questions, “How can TV be pictures of real things?” (Donoghue 61). He only believes that things inside the room are real as he thinks, “Trees are TV but Plant is real” (Donoghue 63). This exhibits Jack’s uneducated and clueless mindset as he cannot grasp the idea that a television projects images of real things. His absence from society reflects the senseless behavior he possesses. He states that the

     The character “Jack” is a character the audience will feel sympathy for and even come to like.

Jack (Tobias) is the main character in the memoir, This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff. The