Ideas Regarding Identity - Case Study Example

The Search for Identity in Contemporary Literature The question of identity has been a question to plague mankind for as long as humankind’s collective memory serves. While things seem to have been relatively straightforward in ancient days, one suspects perhaps this was the result of a single set of voices writing, the dominant male class, rather than the actual truth. This only became apparent in relatively recent times as people of different genders and races began expressing their viewpoints in educated writing, questioning the status quo and age-old assumptions regarding who they are and what they represent. It wasn’t until the 1960s when black people and women in America really started to let their voices be heard. ‘Ethnic’ and ‘gendered’ voices had been apparent in Europe for some time before, but little attention was given regarding what this actually meant toward the dominant understanding of identity. As more and more minorities and women began adding their voices to the literary realm, ideas regarding identity became more confused and ill-defined. As a result, much of the literature produced in the past 100 years demonstrates a distinct lack of confidence, anxiety and incoherence regarding what identity is and ought to be. To understand the source of this confusion, one must have a general understanding of the sociological imagination that leads to an understanding of identity as well as how this understanding became confused in the past two centuries. This understanding of how identity, formed from a shifting and unclear sociological imagination, becomes confused and unsure can then be applied to some of the literature produced in this time period, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby and Tim O’Brien’s war story of The Things They Carried as a means of discovering just how well literature reflects the prevailing crises of its times. Sociological imagination is the way in which we stratify ourselves within our society and in how we develop our own identity. By linking our own personal experience with the collective understanding of what that represents, we are able to classify ourselves as well as others within specific social groups. It is upon this understanding that we form and understand our own identity. Three aspects of the sociological imagination include class, race and gender.1 Class is based upon a variety of factors including profession, income levels and educational attainment. People with a great deal of education are often identified as holding higher level professional positions and higher rates of pay than less educated individuals. While class is often considered quite flexible, race and gender remain difficult to change. Race is determined based on physical characteristics, but can also be influenced by ethnic concerns. Generally, ethnicity is considered to refer to a person’s national origin, language, religion, dietary practices or common historical heritage. Although race is inherited through the genes, ethnicity is the result of socialization from one generation to the next. Gender is a learned identification with a particular biological sex – male or female – while sexuality refers to the way in which people organize their world based on sexual identity. Using the sociological imagination, it can be seen that before identity can be fully determined, one must have an understanding of where they stand in the world, which typically depends upon an understanding of some element of society as being the lowest or inferior as well as a clear understanding of what element of society represents the highest or superior.2 Throughout most of history, white males have retained the dominant portion of power in society. This is first because white men, rather than white women, were firmly in control of the European nations thanks in large part to the teachings of the Catholic Church which held that women were incapable of higher thought in spite of several examples such as Queen Elizabeth of England or Queen Isabella of Spain. White men were able to gain firmer control of the world because they were the first to develop more technologically advanced weapons and tools that enabled them to dominate other nations. This domination was deliberately reinforced through the processes of withholding education and opportunity from those individuals who did not fit the dominant social identity – namely white and male and Christian. By withholding education and opportunity from people with colour and from women, white men were able to retain their power and establish a system in which women and people of colour were seen to be socially inferior.3 By setting those with colour socially below white people, even the lower class white male was able to feel superior to someone. Through the same channels, men dominated over women. Women were socially constrained within homes, legally oppressed and deprived of an education throughout a great deal of history, thus keeping them at low levels of the social scale. However, as people of colour and women began to gain equal rights under the law and educations rivalling that of the white men, they have continuously demonstrated themselves to be equally as capable as those who had once held them down. In proving this, there has emerged a crisis of identity among all social levels as traditional understandings have broken down and new understandings have yet to be formed. Social stratifications help the individual to place themselves within the greater world just as the various behaviours the individual participates in help to define that identity to the external world, aspects of identity that are explored in much of contemporary literature.4 The title character in Fitzgerald’s novel represents the kind of search for identity through external identification that has dominated the last century. It becomes immediately clear in the novel that Jay Gatsby has set his sights on winning back the only girl he ever felt he loved despite their unmatched social status in childhood. He has always based his identity upon the vision of himself as Daisy’s husband and growing old together. Gatsby reasons that the best way to win Daisy back from her rich and popular husband is to be rich himself and to have flashier things than her husband has provided. In this, Gatsby incorrectly identifies wealth as being the ability to put on an ostentatious show and reasons that he can build a new identity for himself through a similar display. Toward that end, Gatsby buys a huge mansion that he feels will give him the identity of a respectable man of wealth despite the fact that he has made his money in the illegal bootlegging trade and he throws lavish parties in hopes that he will be identified as a fun and popular man to whom Daisy would do well to join. Although his plan seems to be working as he does become associated with wealth and popularity, Daisy still opts to remain with her husband, who has real wealth and powerful connections, which are considered the true elements of a rich identity and cannot be duplicated. The emptiness of the external identity Gatsby has designed for himself is summed up by Nick following Gatsby’s murder: “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.”5 (182). Although Gatsby’s bid for the splendour of the rich and famous through a reconstruction of his external image seems almost successful in achieving his aims, the truth that Gatsby was incapable of fully understanding the identity of the rich and powerful only manages to bring him to a tragic end. As Nick observes, had Gatsby opted to remain in the ‘new wealthy’ society, his struggles with identity, class and acceptance would not have been so disastrous. Tim O’Brien’s story, set in the middle of war, demonstrates the kind of loss of identity and struggle to find it again that many people in contemporary society struggle through. While the young men featured in the story were once full of the romantic ideas of themselves winning glory and fame through heroic deeds, they have long abandoned these ideas as they continue to lug their tools of war and survival with them with every heavy step. They have come to identify themselves more in terms of beasts of burden rather than strictly human as they list the various things they have to keep with them at all times. “Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighted between 15 and 20 pounds.”6 As they trudge through the war realizing that nothing about their personal identities bears any meaning against what they are expected to do or how they are expected to do it, each soldier begins to lose the concept of who he thought he was and what he thought he was or was not capable of. However, each of the soldiers continues to try to cling to the sense of identity they had before coming to the war through small things such as the letters from Martha that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries with him. Although it is immediately revealed that these are not love letters from the girl to the young soldier, the soldier has attached romantic ideals to them: “He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire.”7 This romanticism is hinted at more as the various personal items of each man is relayed, but still becomes greatly overpowered by the weight of their weapons, ammunition and other gear that continues to be listed, complete with approximate weight. Reality of their situation is directly contrasted with Hollywood’s definition of the soldier as the discrepancies between Hollywood death and real death are compared in the death of Lavender. “It was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something – just boom, then down – not like the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle – not like that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down. Nothing else.”8 The boys in the story were once young men dreaming of adventure and perhaps even glory as they risked their lives to save those of their fellow soldiers, but now they are simply trying to survive from one moment to the next, trying and failing to forget the weight of their burden as they attempt to redefine themselves based on their new knowledge not only of themselves, but also of the world they live in. In each of these stories, the relentless pursuit of an identity that seems to be constantly slipping away comprises the underlying driving force of the action. Gatsby continues to seek a new identity for himself that is other than the poor, uneducated man he was before leaving for war. In attempting to define himself through exterior elements, Gatsby is never able to bring his internal identity into line with his exterior persona and thus fails to understand many of the elements of the ‘old rich’ society that he wishes to be associated with. Because of this failure of understanding, Gatsby is not able to achieve the sense of identity he wants – both alienating himself from his true identity in his desire for something different and cutting himself off from the new identity because of an inability to fully understand the dynamics involved. Similarly, the soldiers found in O’Brien’s story have been forcibly divorced from their soldierly identities formed through years of watching Hollywood films about soldiers and war heroes to discover the reality of their position as mere drudges and beasts of burden. While they attempt to cling to a sense of identity brought from home through various personal items that they carry with them, in no case is this sufficient to challenge the crushing sense of loss they experience as they make their way through the war. As a result, literature such as The Great Gatsby and The Things They Carried demonstrate the problem of identity as it is understood, or misunderstood, in today’s constantly shifting culture which provides no stable point upon which the sociological imagination can be based. Bibliography Fitzgerald, F. Scott. (1925). The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Garrett, Brian. (1998). Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness. London: Routledge. Mills, C. Wright. (2001). The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Brien, Tim. (1998). The Things They Carried. New York: Random House. Read More