Questioning, Battling and Identifying With Certain Types of Identities throughout Lives - Essay Example

5 Story Themes For this highly interesting and analytical assignment, I have chosen to connect the following 5 stories; “Reflections of a 17-Year Old” by Sylvia Plath, “The Parish and the Hill by Mary Doyle Curran, “A Walk to the Jetty” by Jamaica Kincaid, “Private Language: by Patty Crespo, and finally, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan. All these stories share a common theme, that of battling multiple identities as one embarks upon a life, adventure, or career in a new world filled with uncertainty and self-doubt. The meaning behind their stories being that we will go throughout our lives questioning, battling, and identifying with certain types of identities throughout our lives. All depending upon the requirement of the social situation that we find ourselves in. There will be those who will question the choice of “Reflections of a 17 - Year Old” by Sylvia Plath in the roster of stories. However, I believe that even though the narrative is being done by an American girl who is about to embark on a college life for the first time, it still provides a valuable insight into how a person reaching the age of maturity finds himself or herself battling multiple identities. Although a person is looking forward to the independence that life brings once he reaches college, that person is still uncertain of whether he or she can actually handle the new life he or she is entering into. In a way, Plath in the essay is speaking of how she is creating a new identity for herself once she enters college, one that will help her adjust to the demands of her new life and in the process, help her develop into a better individual as well. Plath allows us an insight into how she was feeling on the day that she realized that she was no longer a child but rather, a young adult soon to face the challenges and uncertainties of life by telling the reader: Somehow I have to keep and hold the rapture of being 17. Everyday is so precious I feel infinitely sad at the thought of all this time melting farther and farther away from me as I grow older. Now, now is the perfect time of my life. Plath clearly depicted the fear that every 17 year old, male or female, has about that age that is considered the turning point in every adult's life. 17 is the age when one is neither a child nor an adult anymore in the eyes of the world. It is a transition age into the age of legality when people expect more mature decisions and a sense of responsibility from a teenager. It is the fear that every teenager has. That the fun and fancy free life once known to him or her will now be a thing of the past. It is this uncertainty and self-doubt that can also be clearly seen in the next story, “A Walk to the Jetty”, that seems to seamlessly connect with the multiple identities issue presented in “Reflections of a 17-Year Old”. In “A Walk to the Jetty” author Jamaica Kincaid shares the story of Annie John homeland for a higher education abroad. Just like in the previous story, Annie is filled with self-doubt at the thought of having to leave all that was familiar to her, including her parents. It is clear that she is totally unprepared for the responsibility of taking charge of her life and dealing with the need to adjust who she is as a person once she reaches the shores of her educational home. Her quest is made even more difficult because she wishes to change her mind about her education abroad at the very last minute. It is almost as if she realizes that she will need to create a new identity for herself in order to handle the demands of her new life. It never occurred to her, before she set foot on the jetty that her life was going to drastically change and she would no longer be able to go back to the life she once knew. She was going to need to change who she was in order to create her new life and she was just unprepared for it. She came to the realization that she valued her old life so much that she was unwilling to let it go. Her sense of not wanting to let go of her past, its security, and all its comforts, including her fear of what was to come in her new life is strongly depicted by the simple action of Annie taking the hands of her parents as they await her boarding the jetty. When they too clasped her hands, it was a sign that they also knew of her fears but reassured her that even though her future would change, her past, her parents, who are the constant connection she has to her past, will always be there for her to return to. Which is a theme that Patty Crespo, in her essay “Private Language”, comes to examine closely. Anyone who embarks on a new quest in their lives ends up having to create multiple identities. That is the implication made by Patty in her essay where she advocates the multiple personality for obvious reasons. It is important, according to her, that one hold on to the heritage of his or her parents, including the mother language of their parents in order to give themselves a unique identity in a world full of people. Patty's reasoning behind this is that: Immigrants should learn English to speak with the public, but they should also keep their language at home. The children of immigrants should learn to speak their language. It is very important to communicate with our relatives and family, in general. If we learn English only and forget our “private language”, we won't be able to communicate with our parents. For example, Florence, my co-worker speaks English only. Her mother didn't teach her Spanish (her mother language). Nowadays, Florence can't communicate with her grandparents or other relatives in Puerto Rico. She has lost her mother's language, tradition, and culture. By keeping in touch with their parents past, they are able to create two personalities for themselves that allows them to be comfortable in the two worlds that they are made to live in by circumstance. Imagine how difficult it would be for a person, a teenager in particular, to be living in the United States but unable to speak to his or her parents because they do not speak the same language. The lack of communication between parent and child, as it existed for some people whom she cited as examples in her essay, creates a very sad home situation for these people. Unable to communicate with one another, the tendency will be to shy away from the primary identity that a person has, which is the identity the person is known by at home. However, the second identity created for the outside world to enjoy is the one used most often in school and in other public places, takes over as the more dominant personality. This creates a type of multiple personality disorder in a person and a sense of shame that they have a prior personality to represent when they do not wish to or are ashamed to do so. It is this particular problem when it comes to multiple identities that comes to the forefront of the generational stories represented in the novel “The Parish and the Hill” by Mary Doyle Curran. Curran's characters all represent various struggles in terms of having to deal with their multiple identities in a society that judges a person social class. Either you “are” or you “aren't”. There is no in between for them in their family and their town. The way the generations of characters portray the trials and tribulations of growing up in their town that forces them to deal with their multiple ethnic identities, alienation because of the multiple identities, and the social classes that divide the town. Her characters, from the moment the immigrant generation arrives in the country, already find themselves plagued by the problem of acceptance and belonging. At first it was because they did not have any financial wealth of social status in the area. Then their own children began to struggle with their identities as first generation residents whose parents still insisted upon their adhering to the ways of the old country rather than allowing them to successfully integrate into their current society. The trials and tribulations of a generation plagued with the problem of finding a balance between the old world traditions their family wants them to uphold and respect, while also wishing to become more a part of the culture that they grew up in, having a multiple personality so to speak, is a theme that can also be found in Ms. Amy Tan's essay “Mother Tongue”. The struggles of the people in this story are not lost upon author Amy Tan who in her short essay “Mother Tongue” also deals with the ups and downs of her multiple identity and the results of having to deal with a mother who refuses to speak English correctly even though she can. In her short story / essay,. Tan explains how she had to struggle in life with regards to her relationship with her mother whom she felt was an embarrassment to her. She was an embarrassment because she refused to improve her English skills beyond that which would help her be better understood by the native speakers. It was a family situation that Amy laeter came to realize was not an embarrassment but rather something to be proud of because her mother, whom others would term as broken for not being able to properly speak the English language, was nothing of the sort. Rather, her mother spoke English fluently in her mind. It is just that it was this identity that her mother had created for herself in America that made her comfortable as a person living in what she considered to be a new and strange land. It is important to note that in this essay, Ms. Tan has in a way, agreed with the declarations of Patty Crespo in her own essay about multiple identities. Even though it came later on in her life, Ms. Tan came to embrace her multiple identities and the value of it. She no longer saw her multiple identity as a drawback as the characters did in “The Parish and the Hill”. Instead, she became proud of everything that made her Chinese, and allowed her to communicate with her mother in their own “private language” while also advocating for the empowerment of immigrants in the English tongue. She was in a very unique position to do both and she made sure to not fail in her advocacy. As Amy explains: I think my mother's English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life. Sociologists and linguists will probably tell you that a person's developing language skills, are most influenced by peers. But I do think that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a role in shaping the language of a child. The common theme of multiple identities and the difficulties that come with it is what made the stories by the 5 authors quite interesting and important to me. Being a person of multiple identities myself, since English is not my native tongue, I could easily identify and take lessons from the assigned course readings. Course readings which, I might add, also helped me to come and understand my own situation as well. Not being a native speaker of the English language has often left me confused and fearful of who I truly am. Sometimes I find myself ashamed at not being a fluent speaker and have a sense of lacking on self worth because of it. Perhaps that is why there are moments in my life when I would rather create a new identity when I am with my peers, because it makes it easier for me to adjust to my new life when I am not the person whom my parents raised. If I know that by changing who I am, I might lose my traditional past, but I will gain a new future instead. Our class readings have taught me that I do not have to let go of the past in order to become a person of the future. Rather, I need to work on finding a way to merge my past, my present, and my future. For when I am able to do that, I will be able to say that I have found who I truly am as a person. Read More