Hello World I am back
and ready to share all my extremely interesting opinions and analysis’s of
elements that help create a person’s identity. Society places several roles
when it comes to creating a person’s identity; what class they are born into,
what side of the city they live on, and what race and or ethnic background they
come from. Society judges all these aspects and forces a person to be on their
own path based on these elements. When a child is born into a wealthy family and
grows up on the nice side of the city, they are sheltered from various occurrences
in life. Whether it is that, they have never seen violence or have never had to
work for anything in their life they are sheltered from what most refer to as
the real world. However, the elements that society has given them have formed
their identity. Where a human grows up, whom they grow up with and what they go
through during their life shapes an identity. As my AP Literature class
discovered after reading Native Son, by Richard Wright not everyone has
the luxury of living a life that they desire. In the novel, the main character
Bigger Thomas represents African Americans during the 1930’s, a period in which
blacks were considered free but faced societal segregation. Thomas desired to
lead his own life, to make him own choices. These choices were as simple as
getting to pick what side of Chicago he lived on, where he ate and what he did
for an occupation in his life. However, he never got this chance to lead his
own life for society had chosen his path for him based on his skin color,
something that was out of his control. Thus, the reason society played an
enormous role in forming Thomas’s identity; it had given him no other path. He
never had the opportunity to find and discover for himself who he was, he had
people tell him that instead. In addition, he lived on the poor side of Chicago
in a one room, rat infested apartment with his mother and two younger siblings
while a white adolescent grew up in a large home with multiple bedrooms and
plenty of food. Therefore, we see Bigger Thomas begin to hate society and be
jealous of the white population because they controlled him and had things he desperately
needed and desired. A person’s identity is not created based on one action that
takes place within their life, for instance in the novel we see Thomas murder
however we know that is not what has shaped him as a person. The hatred towards
him as well as African Americans in general during this era , the conditions in
which he lived and the culture he was brought up in shaped him as a person not
the violence that he carried out. This novel taught my class that it is not the
actions of one’s life that makes them who they are but their background , where
they came from , who they were raised by and ultimately what they have
experienced through life from society.
Until next time !
If you would like to know more about Richard Wright's novel, Native Son, click here!
