What Shapes Individual Identity There many things in life shape identity but some of the biggests factors that shape identity are race, wealth, gender and the experiences you go through. How is an individual sense of identity formed? Through race, wealth gender and experiences their are countless ways identity is formed.
First, race. Race plays a huge role in everyday life. For example in the Ted talk “We Need To Talk About Injustice” Bryan Stevenson says “For african americans in this country, in this country, that was a era defined by terror. In many communities, people had to worry about lynched. They had to worry about being bombed. It was was the threat of terror that shaped their lives.” This quote by Bryan Stevenson explicitly says what kinds of things African Americans had to go through in the past. Their identity was shaped in many ways by the terror and fear they had to go through on a daily basis and this terror was because of the racial differences blacks and whites. In other words the hatred the whites
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Gender has countless implicit rules stating how males and females should act, dress and live their lives. This is especially true in the story How to Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee in this story the narrator Scout is young female growing up in a small town. Scout is affected by the implicit gender rules in many way because she doesn't dress or act like typical girls. This is because her father does not necessarily care how she dresses. This creates tension for Scout though later on in the story for example when Mrs. Dubose tells Scout on page 135 “what are you doing in those overalls? You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady!” This scares Scout as a young girl and she struggles with the thought that girls need to dress a certain way and this plays an important role in her individual identity especially since she is so young and she may feel that she needs to change the ways she dresses to follow the implicit gender
Gender is a huge social code that affects us all. Gender was used against Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird throughout the book. Aunt Alexandra says “It would be best for you to have some feminine influence” ( ). Aunt Alexandra said this to Scout because she does not think that scout is very ladylike. Gender in Scouts society shapes who she will become because most adults would probably force her to be more ladylike like other women, but scout does not want that.
African Americans all had fear in their eyes everyday from the time they woke up till the time they would fall asleep. Being a person of color they knew anything could happen to them at any time. African Americans feared death, incarceration and lynching all because the color of their skin. For instance, “Explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park ... when she is told that Funtown is closed for colored children…developing an unconscious bitterness towards white people” (King 224).
While this may not seem like a loss of innocence at first, Scout is being told that the way she grew up acting was completely incorrect and changes her outlook on her life. “Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire. I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn’t supposed to be doing things that required pants. Aunt Alexandra’s vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born. . .” (Lee 93).
Are you who you are because of individuality, or because of someone else? Truth is, the answer can be either one. The Marrian Webster Dictionary goes on to define identity as “who someone is”, but there is much more to it. Identity works in many ways. For my definition of identity, I believe that identity is how you present yourself to society.
Where does our personal identity come from? Each individual has its own characteristic, which shapes person identity. The characteristic of person creates its own unique identity. Identity is base on person past, present and future. There are many articles, which talk about identity, and many researchers have their own unique thoughts.
Instead, she wants to wear pants and a shirt. This is an excellent example of how she can appear as a tomboy to the reader since boys don’t wear dresses. Instead, they wear just a shirt and pants. Mrs. Dubose asks Scout what she is doing in overalls. Then, she says that Scout should be in a dress and camisole, and calls her a young lady (Lee 135).
Looking Beyond the Character Many times people have said that appearances can be deceiving, or that appearances are not what they seem. This can be proved true with the characters in a novel. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, she shows many examples of this in her writing. The story covers a few characters who the readers eventually get to see and know more about, who demonstrate a theme of how people are not always what they seem to be.
To kill a mockingbird report “Appearances can be deceiving” This cliché term teaches us that your appearance doesn't determine your potential that lies underneath. In the book To Kill A Mockingbird harper lee uses characterization and symbolism to show the reader that appearances are not always what they seem , and if you reveal what's underneath you realize that the world is more complex than you think. Many characters in the novel have deceived appearances . one of them is Mrs. dubose ,
C. A. L. M. is a group consisting of Chelsea, Amanda, Lindsey and Mackenzie. This group did a presentation focusing on the theme of hidden identities. They decided to speak about the hidden identities in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, and a short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter”. To Kill A Mockingbird is a novel about the experiences of a young child in Maycomb County, Alabama in the 1930s. “Lamb to the Slaughter” is a short story about a woman who murders her husband with a leg of lamb.
However, in the past few years it has escalated to a point that has made race one of America’s top problems. While most chose not to believe it, there is such a huge split between the blacks and white, rich or poor it does not matter. There is still discrimination, stereotyping, and major degradation to the point of hostility among certain groups. There are some communities where race does not matter and blacks and whites are able to overcome their differences and create a neighborhood of peace. The American complication with race has multiple positions and outlooks.
You should be in a dress and camisole young lady! You’ll grow up waiting tables if somebody doesn’t change your ways…”(135). This shows that Mrs.Dubose also stereotypes that Scout isn’t ladylike and
English 10 Date: _____________ Mango Street—Double Entry Journal (DEJ) Period: ____ Overview: A DEJ is a way to closely read passages from a text, to discover what individual words and sentences reveal about characters, conflicts, themes, etc. In the future, you will be selecting your own “strong lines” and meaningful passages to comment on, but for this first effort three have been chosen for you. Each passage shows something about Esperanza, her relationship to someone else in the neighborhood, and/or her opinion about a particular social issue. Link your passages to the Essential Questions: HOW DOES CHANGE AFFECT THE FUTURE?
Some might believe that we are done with the dog days we say stuff like, “Oh there is no more racism,” or “Racism is over we have a black president now.” In addition, just because we have a black president does not mean racism is over, one person cannot make racism end, something that has been occurring for various centuries since the first ship arrived to Jamestown in 1607. As we have seen over and over these ongoing trends of dehumanizing people of color and how that is affecting them now. If you do not believe that racism and segregation does not exist anymore well black people where there are unstable social and economically and black were out of the housing market, where they could not buy a home where white people lived. (The House We
Gender is something that is brought to the attention of people well before people are even brought into the world. Take for instance, when a woman finds out that she is pregnant and is about to have a child. The first question that that women is asked is “What are you having?” In doing this we are automatically emphasizing the importance of being able to identify whether or not to buy “boy” things or “girl” things. As a society we deem it important for each sex to practice a set of “norms” of how to behave via that sex.
The definition of someone’s identity is the distinct personality of an individual. There are a lot of factors that determines someone’s identity. Things such as your race, role in society, and your faith. Throughout our lives, we seek out people who we can identify with. We reach out to others and learn from interests they have and we evaluate their responses to us.