Holly's Tale Family Identity Analysis

The use of the family unit in both texts is very little and highlights how dysfunctional family life can be, in any era or time period. And how it has an influence in shaping one’s identity.

Family life is an important aspect in how one 's identity is formed, this is prominent in the characters in both texts. Capote writes of Holly’s lack of family ties in the novel and her disrupted life growing up. ‘’Like my brother Fred. We used to sleep four in a bed, and he was the only one that ever let me hug him on a cold night." the use of internal rhyme with ’fred’ and ‘bed’ heightens the fact that holly relied in Fred when she was a child, using him as a safety mechanism to help her get through events that she may face. The short sentence at the

This is noticeable in the character of Jack, when he was a child he was orphaned and left in a bag in victoria station. Similarly, his ward Cecily was also Orphaned but as her grandfather adopted Jack this left her with some sort of family member to look after her. ‘Algy, you young scoundrel, you will have to treat me with more respect in the future. You have never behaved to me like a brother in all your life’. This quote shows irony as Jack was unaware that he had any real family members until the end of the play. ‘You have never behaved to me like a brother in all your life’ reflects the relationship of Jack and Algernon and that it is rather close knit as they fight and bicker like brothers usually would. The use of caesura at the start of the quote ‘Algy, you young scoundrel, ‘ shows the possible overwhelmedness of jack in finding out that he has a brother, it shows a pause in his language and that he is thinking of what actions to take. The whole play is about the search for identity and what it truly means to be ‘earnest’. The search for Jack’s true identity is revealed at the end of the play when he finds out that he has a family, giving a cathartic release to many of the characters as jack has gone his whole life thinking that he has no real family, when in fact he has a brother and an aunt etc. Wilde uses satire to poke fun at the upper classes but also when jack finds out his true identity as at the end of the play he is in fact called ‘ernest’ showing that he wasn’t lying about who he