identity literary essay

What Makes a Person: The Seven Layers of Identity in Literature and Life

By maria popova.

“A person’s identity,” Amin Maalouf wrote as he contemplated what he so poetically called the genes of the soul , “is like a pattern drawn on a tightly stretched parchment. Touch just one part of it, just one allegiance, and the whole person will react, the whole drum will sound.” And yet we are increasingly pressured to parcel ourselves out in various social contexts, lacerating the parchment of our identity in the process. As Courtney Martin observed in her insightful On Being conversation with Parker Palmer and Krista Tippett, “It’s never been more asked of us to show up as only slices of ourselves in different places.” Today, as Whitman’s multitudes no longer compose an inner wholeness but are being wrested out of us fragment by fragment, what does it really mean to be a person? And how many types of personhood do we each contain?

In the variedly stimulating 1976 volume The Identities of Persons ( public library ), philosopher Amélie Rorty (May 20, 1932–September 18, 2020) considers the seven layers of personhood, rooted in literature but extensible to life. She writes:

Humans are just the sort of organisms that interpret and modify their agency through their conception of themselves. This is a complicated biological fact about us.

Rorty offers a brief taxonomy of those conceptions before exploring each in turn:

Characters are delineated; their traits are sketched; they are not presumed to be strictly unified. They appear in novels by Dickens, not those by Kafka. Figures appear in cautionary tales, exemplary novels and hagiography. They present narratives of types of lives to be imitated. Selves are possessors of their properties. Individuals are centers of integrity; their rights are inalienable. Presences are descendants of souls; they are evoked rather than presented, to be found in novels by Dostoyevsky, not those by Jane Austen.

Depending on which of these we adopt, Rorty argues, we become radically different entities, with different powers and proprieties, different notions of success and failure, different freedoms and liabilities, different expectations of and relations to one another, and most of all a different orientation toward ourselves in the emotional, intellectual, and social spaces we inhabit.

And yet we ought to be able to interpolate between these various modalities of being:

Worldliness consists of [the] ability to enact, with grace and aplomb, a great variety of roles.

Rorty begins with the character , tracing its origin to Ancient Greek drama:

Since the elements out of which characters are composed are repeatable and their configurations can be reproduced, a society of characters is in principle a society of repeatable and indeed replaceable individuals.

Characters, Rorty points out, don’t have identity crises because they aren’t expected to have a core unity beneath their assemblage of traits. What defines them is which of these traits become manifested, and this warrants the question of social context:

To know what sort of character a person is, is to know what sort of life is best suited to bring out his potentialities and functions… Not all characters are suited to the same sorts of lives: there is no ideal type for them all… If one tries to force the life of a bargainer on the character of a philosopher, one is likely to encounter trouble, sorrow, and the sort of evil that comes from mismatching life and temperament. Characters formed within one society and living in circumstances where their dispositions are no longer needed — characters in time of great social change — are likely to be tragic. Their virtues lie useless or even foiled; they are no longer recognized for what they are ; their motives and actions are misunderstood. The magnanimous man in a petty bourgeois society is seen as a vain fool; the energetic and industrious man in a society that prizes elegance above energy is seen as a bustling boor; the meditative person in an expansive society is seen as melancholic… Two individuals of the same character will fare differently in different polities, not because their characters will change through their experiences (though different aspects will become dominant or recessive) but simply because a good fit of character and society can conduce to well-being and happiness, while a bad fit produces misery and rejection.

Rorty’s central point about character takes it out of the realm of the literary and the philosophical, and into the realm of our everyday lives, where the perennial dramas of who we are play out:

“To be a character” is to maintain a few qualities, nourish them to excess until they dominate and dictate all others. A character is delineated and thus generally delimited. To “have character” is to have reliable qualities, to hold tightly to them through the temptations to swerve and change. A person of character is neither bribed nor corrupted; he stands fast, is steadfast. […] Because characters are public persons, even their private lives can have universal form, general significance. The dramatic character, writ large, can represent for everyman what only later came to be thought of as the inner life of some; it can portray the myth, the conflicts, reversals and discoveries of each person, each polis.

After characters come figures , which Rorty describes as “characters writ large,” “defined by their place in an unfolding drama.” Figures are allegorical archetypes — rather their being defined by their vocations or social roles, their traits originate in ancient stories. Rorty writes:

A figure is neither formed by nor owns experiences: his figurative identity shapes the significances of the events in his life. […] Individuals who regard themselves as figures watch the unfolding of their lives following the patterns of their archetypes… They form the narratives of their lives and make their choices according to the pattern… In contrast with the wholly external perspective on characters, the concept of a figure introduces the germ of what will become a distinction between the inner and the outer person. An individual’s perspective on his model, his idealized real figure, is originally externally presented, but it becomes internalized, becomes the internal model of self-representation.

This shift from self-discovery to active choice, to locus of agency, brings us to the person . Rorty writes:

A person’s roles and his place in the narrative devolve from the choices that place him in a structural system related to others. The person thus comes to stand behind his roles, to select them and to be judged by his choices and his capacities to act out his personae in a total structure that is the unfolding of his drama. The idea of a person is the idea of a unified center of choice and action, the unit of legal and theological responsibility. Having chosen, a person acts, and so is actionable, liable. It is in the idea of action that the legal and the theatrical sources of the concept of person come together.

Central to the concept of the person — unlike the character and the figure — is the idea of free will , which springs from our capacity for making choices and implies the responsibility for those choices. Rorty explains:

If judgment summarizes a life … then that life must have a unified location. Since they choose from their natures or are chosen by their stories, neither characters nor figures need be equipped with a will, not to mention a free will… The actions of characters and figures do no emerge from the exercise of a single faculty of power: there is no need for a single source of responsibility… Persons are required to unify the capacity for choice with the capacities for action.

This very capacity, Rorty argues, is what defines personhood. But unlike the powers of characters, which exist on a spectrum, personhood is a binary notion — because it arises from responsibility, and in any given instance we are either liable or not, there are no degrees in personhood. The more obvious dark side to this binary conception is the sociopolitical one: Throughout its evolving understanding of what it means to be human , our civilization has systematically treated various classes of people — women, children, people of color — as less-than-persons by denying them basic human rights of choice. But there is also a private psychological downside to our capacity for choice, one that plays out from the inside out rather than the outside in. Rorty writes:

It is the intentions, the capacities for choice rather than the total configuration of traits which defines the person. Here the stage is set for identity crises, for wondering who one really is, behind the multifold variety of actions and roles. And the search for that core person is not a matter of curiosity; it is a search for the principles by which choices are to be made.

One of these principles is the notion of property, which determines the rights and agency of persons, thus transforming them into selves and conferring upon them the status of souls and minds . Rorty writes:

The two strands that were fused in the concept of person diverge again: When we focus on persons as sources of decisions, the ultimate locus of responsibility, the unity of thought and action, we must come to think of them as souls and minds. When we think of them as possessors of rights and powers, we come to think of them as selves. It is not until each of these has been transformed into the concept of individuality that the two strands are woven together again. […] When a society has changed so that individuals acquire their rights by virtue of their powers, rather than having their powers defined by their rights, the concept of person has been transformed to a concept of self… The quality of an individual self is determined by his qualities: they are his capital, to invest well or foolishly.

In a sentiment that calls to mind young Sylvia Plath’s meditation on free will and what makes us who we are , Rorty considers the identity level of soul and mind :

Because persons are primary agents of principle, their integrity requires freedom; because they are judged liable, their powers must be autonomous. But when this criterion for personhood is carried to its logical extreme, the scope of agency moves inward, away from social dramas, to the choices of the soul, or to the operations of the mind. […] From character as structured dispositions, we come to soul as pure agency, unfathomable, inexpressible.

Echoing philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s ideas on the relationship between property-ownership, agency, and victimhood , Rorty considers the role of property in the conception of the self and its identity-crises in the face of alienation:

Judgments of persons are moral; judgments of souls are theological; judgments of selves are economic and political. Societies of persons are constructed to assure the rights of choice and action; they emerge from a contract of agents; societies of selves are also formed to protect and guarantee the rights of their members. But when the members of a society achieve their rights by virtue of their possessions, the protection of rights requires the protection of property, even though in principle everyone is equally entitled to the fruits of his labors and protection under law. […] The concerns of selves are their interests; their obligations are the duties with which they are taxed or charged. The grammar and the semantics of selfhood reveal the possessive forms. Whatever will come to be regarded as crucial property, or the means to it, will be regarded as the focus of rights; the alienation of property becomes an attack on the integrity if not actually the preservation of the self.

Alongside property, the other essential component of the self is the faculty of memory, which, as Oliver Sacks has memorably demonstrated , is the seedbed of what makes us who we are to ourselves. Rorty writes:

The conscious possession of experiences [is] the final criterion of identity. The continuity of the self is established by memory; disputes about the validity of memory reports will hang on whether the claimant had as hers the original experience. Puzzles about identity will be described as puzzles about whether it is possible to transfer, or to alienate memory (that is, the retention of one’s own experience) without destroying the self.

Today, two generations later, this puzzle is all the more puzzling, for it illuminates the central paradox of the singularity movement and its escapist fantasy of somehow decentralizing, downloading, and transferring the self across different corporeal and temporal hosts. Rorty speaks to this indirectly but brilliantly:

There is difficulty in describing the core possessor, the owner of experiences who is not herself any set of them. One can speak of characters as sets of traits without looking for a center; but it is more difficult to think of bundles of properties without an owner, especially when the older idea of the person as an agent and decision-maker is still implicit. It is presumed that the self as an owner is also endowed with capabilities to choose and to act.

Out of this necessity to reconcile the ownership of experience with the capacity for choice arises the level of the individual . Rorty writes:

From the tensions in the definition of the alienable properties of selves, and from the corruptions in societies of selves — the divergence of practice from ideological commitments — comes the invention of individuality. It begins with conscience and ends with consciousness. Unlike characters and figures, individuals actively resist typing: they represent the universal mind of rational beings, or the unique private voice. Individuals are indivisible entities … Invented as a preserve of integrity, an autonomous ens , an individual transcends and resists what is binding and oppressive in society and does so from an original natural position. Although in its inception, individuality revives the idea of person, the rights of persons are formulated in society, while the rights of individuals are demanded of society. The contrast between the inner and outer person becomes the contrast between the individual and the social mask, between nature and culture. A society of individuals is quite different from one composed of selves. Individuals contract to assure the basic rights to the development of moral and intellectual gifts, as well as legal protection of self and property. Because a society of individuals is composed of indivisible autonomous units, from whose natures — their minds and conscience — come the principles of justice, their rights are not property; they cannot be exchanged, bartered. Their rights and their qualities are their very essence, inalienable.

Therein lies Rorty’s most important point — the integrity of our identity requires a locus of agency that is honored by the collective but cultivated in solitude. With an eye to Virginia Woolf’s immortal defense of that integrity , Rorty writes:

Being an individual requires having a room of one’s own, not because it is one’s possession, but because only there, in solitude, away from the pressure of others, can one develop the features and styles that differentiate one’s own being from others. Integrity comes to be associated with difference; this idea, always implicit in individuality, of preserving one’s right against the encroachment of others within one’s own society, emerges as dominant… Conscientious consciousness is then the transparent eye that illuminates the substance of social life.

And yet there is a level of personhood that exists even above the individual — one that represents our highest mode of being, beyond the ego’s ambitions and preoccupations — the level of presence :

Presences [are] the return of the unchartable soul… They are a mode of attending, being present to [one’s] experiences, without dominating or controlling them. […] Understanding other conceptions of persons puts one on the way of being them; but understanding presences — if indeed there is understanding of them to be had — does not put one any closer to being one. It cannot be achieved by imitation, willing, practice, or a good education. It is a mode of identity invented precisely to go beyond of achievement and willfulness.

Complement The Identities of Persons — the remaining essays in which examine various facets of the perplexity of personhood and come from such celebrated thinkers as Daniel Dennett, John Perry, and Ronald de Sousa — with Rebecca Goldstein on what makes you and your childhood self the same person despite a lifetime of change , Hannah Arendt on being vs. appearing , Andre Gidé on what it really means to be yourself , and Parker Palmer on the six pillars of the integrated life .

— Published March 2, 2016 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/03/02/amelie-rorty-the-identities-of-persons/ —

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English Studies

This website is dedicated to English Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, English Language and its teaching and learning.

Identity Theory in Literature

Identity theory in literature, often associated with postcolonial and cultural studies, explores how individuals and communities construct and negotiate their identities.

Introduction: Identity Theory in Literature

Table of Contents

It delves into the complex interplay of factors such as race, gender, culture, and socio-political contexts in shaping characters and narratives. This theory recognizes that literary works can be reflective of the author’s identity and experiences, offering insight into the broader societal identity dynamics.

It also examines how literature can be a means of challenging or reinforcing existing power structures and stereotypes related to identity. Identity theory in literature serves as a valuable lens for analyzing the intricate relationships between individual and collective identities and their representation in narrative art forms.

Identity Theory in Literature: Theorists, Works and Arguments

• Stuart Hall: A prominent figure in cultural studies, Hall is known for his work on cultural identity and the concept of identity as a process, not a fixed entity. His ideas have had a significant influence on postcolonial and cultural studies.
• Homi K. Bhabha: Bhabha’s work, including The Location of Culture , is influential in postcolonial theory. He emphasizes the idea of “hybridity” in identity, particularly in the context of colonial and postcolonial discourse.
• Gloria Anzaldúa: Her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza explores the intersection of multiple identities, particularly the Chicana identity, and the concept of the “borderlands.”
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois: Du Bois’ work explores the concept of “double consciousness” in the African American experience, highlighting the complexities of identity and the impact of racial discrimination.
• Gender Trouble by Judith Butler: Butler’s work challenges traditional notions of gender identity and argues that gender is performative. This has significant implications for understanding identity in relation to gender.
• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir: De Beauvoir’s examination of women’s oppression and the construction of the “Other” has been influential in feminist literary theory and the study of women’s identity.

Key Arguments:

• Fluidity of Identity : Identity theory in literature emphasizes that identity is not fixed but fluid, subject to change and transformation. It challenges essentialist views of identity.
• Intersectionality : The theory underscores that individuals often inhabit multiple intersecting identities (e.g., race, gender, class), and these intersections play a crucial role in shaping their experiences.
• Colonial and Postcolonial Identity: Postcolonial literature and theory explore how colonialism and its aftermath have shaped identities, often leading to questions of hybridity, diaspora, and cultural negotiation.
• Challenging Stereotypes : Identity theory in literature is concerned with how literature can challenge and disrupt stereotypes, providing a platform for marginalized voices to assert their identities.
• Representation and Power: It highlights the power dynamics involved in the representation of identity in literature, emphasizing the influence of authors, readers, and societal structures on identity narratives.

Identity theory in literature delves into the multifaceted nature of identity, its intersection with power and representation, and its relevance in understanding the experiences of marginalized and diverse communities. It offers a framework for critically analyzing how identity is constructed, portrayed, and negotiated in literary works.

Principals of Identity Theory in Literature

Identity Theory in Literature: Application on Novels

• Beloved by Toni Morrison: Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved explores the intersection of racial and gender identity in the context of slavery. The character Sethe grapples with the legacy of slavery and the impact it has had on her sense of self. The novel delves into the fluidity of identity, the power dynamics involved in shaping one’s identity, and the challenge of confronting stereotypes about Black women’s experiences.
• The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri: Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake delves into the immigrant experience and the negotiation of cultural identity. The protagonist, Gogol, born to Indian parents in the United States, navigates the complexities of dual identity and the intersectionality of being both American and Bengali. The novel illustrates the concept of cultural negotiation and the fluidity of identity in a multicultural context.
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: J.D. Salinger’s classic novel The Catcher in the Rye follows the character Holden Caulfield as he grapples with issues of identity, alienation, and authenticity. The novel highlights the fluidity of identity in adolescence, the challenges of negotiating societal norms, and the impact of power dynamics on personal identity.
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah explores the experiences of Nigerian immigrants in the United States and the complexities of racial identity. The protagonist, Ifemelu, confronts the challenges of being “African American” in the U.S. while maintaining her Nigerian heritage. The novel addresses issues of intersectionality, the negotiation of cultural identity, and the power dynamics involved in shaping racial identity.

Keywords in Identity Theory in Literature

• Intersectionality : The interconnectedness of various aspects of identity, such as race, gender, and class, and how they shape an individual’s experiences.
• Hybridity : The blending or merging of different cultural or identity elements, often occurring in postcolonial contexts.
• Double Consciousness : A concept from W.E.B. Du Bois, referring to the dual awareness of one’s identity in the context of societal norms and prejudices.
• Cultural Negotiation: The process by which individuals navigate and adapt their cultural identity in response to changing contexts, often seen in immigrant literature.
• Stereotype Deconstruction: The critical analysis of stereotypes within literature and the effort to challenge and dismantle them.
• Fluid Identity: The idea that identity is not fixed but adaptable and evolving, influenced by changing circumstances.
• Power Dynamics : The examination of how power structures, both in society and literature, influence the construction and representation of identity.
• Postcolonial Identity: The exploration of how colonialism and its legacies impact the identity and experiences of colonized peoples.
• Gender Performativity: Judith Butler’s concept that gender identity is a performance influenced by societal norms.
• Othering: The process by which individuals or groups are made to feel different or alien, often as a result of identity-related prejudices and biases.

Suggested Readings

• Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza . Aunt Lute Books, 1987.
• Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture . Routledge, 1994.
• Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity . Routledge, 1990.
• Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk . Dover Publications, 1994.
• Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth . Grove Press, 1963.
• Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake . Mariner Books, 2004.
• Morrison, Toni. Beloved . Knopf, 1987.
• Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye . Little, Brown and Company, 1951.
• Said, Edward W. Orientalism . Vintage Books, 1979.

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8 (page 109) p. 109 Identity, identification, and the subject

• Published: July 2011
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‘Identity, identification and the subject’ examines the debate in literary and cultural theory concerning the identity and function of the subject or self. Two basic questions underlie modern thinking here: first, is the self something given or something made and, second, should it be conceived in individual or in social terms? The dominant modern tradition in the study of literature has treated the individuality of the individual as something given, a core expressed in word and deed and an explanation for action. ‘Theory’ has contested not just this model of expression, where acts or words work by expressing a prior subject, but also the priority of the subject itself.

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2.5 Writing Process: Thinking Critically about How Identity Is Constructed Through Writing

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the importance of communication in various cultural, language, and rhetorical situations.
• Implement a variety of drafting strategies to demonstrate the connection between language and social justice.
• Apply the composition processes and tools as a means to discover and reconsider ideas.
• Participate in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.
• Give and act on productive feedback to works in progress.

Now it’s your turn to join this cultural conversation. As you write, keep your audience in mind as well as the principles of inclusivity and anti-racism that you have learned about. Consider how you can share your personal experiences, ideas, and beliefs in a way that is inclusive of all and shows sensitivity to the culture of your readers.

Summary of Assignment: Cultural Artifact

Choose an artifact that symbolizes something about a culture to which you belong. This might be a physical object that you have, or it may be a metaphorical object, such as Du Bois’s color line or veil, that represents something larger about your culture. Write approximately 350–700 words describing it, using sensory detail and explaining its meaning both to you personally and within your culture. To begin your thinking, view this TEDx Talk for a discussion of cultural artifacts and narrative led by artist David Bailey.

Another Lens 1. Choose a space that is important to a cultural community to which you belong. While visiting this space, conduct an hour-long observation. Respond in writing to these items: Describe the space in detail. What do you see permanently affixed in the space? What activity is going on? How is the space currently used? What is the atmosphere? How are you feeling while conducting your observation? Then, do some brief research on the space (using the Internet, the library, or campus archives), and answer these questions: What is the history of the space? When was it established, and under what circumstances? How has this space been used in the past? What is your response or reaction to this history? Then write a passage in which you highlight a unique feature of the space and your cultural relationship to it.

Another Lens 2. Considering Du Bois’s theory of double consciousness, explore the ways in which you may experience competing identities or competing cultures in your own life. What experiences have you had or witnessed where language clashed with or supported your identity or culture? What happened? How did others react? How did you react? What insight does your experience offer on this discussion of rhetoric and the power of language to define, shape, and change or give birth to identity or culture?

Quick Launch: Joining the Dialogue

You may choose to use journaling to develop your language use and voice. Journaling, or keeping a written record of your thoughts and ideas, can clarify your thoughts and emotions, help you better understand your values, and increase your creativity. The following two journaling techniques should help you get started.

Character Sketch and Captured Moment

Because your cultural artifact may be tied to a person, a character sketch might help you think about its significance. A character sketch is a brief description of a real or fictional person—in this case, likely someone you know or even yourself. In it, you describe the character’s personality, physical traits, habits, history, relationships, and ties to the cultural artifact. You may include research about the character to introduce readers to them. Use the following format if you need more guidance:

Character Sketch

• Anecdote about the character
• Most important traits
• Physical appearance
• Ties to cultural artifact

A character sketch of your grandmother might read as follows.

student sample text My first memory of Nonna materializes in the kitchen, where we are baking Swedish cookies together. She carefully shows me how to measure ingredients, stirring with her hand over mine in her deep “cookie-making” bowl. Nonna is a slight woman with a big heart full of kindness. She teaches me many skills, both in and out of the kitchen, that I still use today. Some have proven to be life lessons. She never met a stranger she didn’t like and often said it takes more effort to be unkind than kind. Because of Nonna, the Swedish cookie has become a metaphor for my life. The ingredients of one’s life make up an identity, and the combination is always delicious. end student sample text

Another journaling technique is to record a captured moment through the examination of a cultural artifact. This exercise lets you use an artifact as a means to look at an event in your life and create a written piece that captures its importance, emotion, or meaning. Select an artifact and an experience. Think about what they mean to you. What do you remember, and why? Then go deeper. Analyze the long-term meaning of it in your life. Try to recreate the artifact and then the experience in your mind, and relive the sensations you experienced in the moment.

Choose the Artifact

Begin your assignment by choosing your artifact. You may take inspiration from W. E. B. Du Bois’s image of the veil in the annotated sample in the previous section. Or, going back to the beginning of this chapter and Sequoyah ’s syllabary, you may choose to take inspiration from something linguistic, an expression or a way of talking that is associated with your culture. You may choose an artifact that, like the veil, has metaphorical significance. Or you may choose a more tangible artifact, such as a religious symbol, a traditional clothing item, or any number of objects related to your chosen culture.

Once you have chosen your artifact, do a prewriting exercise called a freewrite . In this activity, set a time limit (say, 10 minutes), and write whatever comes to mind about your object within that time. Don’t worry about organization, flow, grammar, punctuation, or whether your writing is “good”; just write. This exercise not only gets your creative juices flowing but also allows you to put pen to paper and opens your mind to what may be subconscious thoughts about the object as it relates to culture.

Next, it is time to take a more refined approach to planning your writing. Think back to The Digital World: Building on What You Already Know to Respond Critically , which addresses the different purposes for writing. To help shape your writing use a separate sheet of paper to answer the questions in Table 2.1 .

Drafting: Critical Context

In your writing, try to incorporate and respond to the current cultural climate. Context is information that helps readers understand the cultural factors that affect your ideas, actions, and thoughts. Context helps build the relationship between you as a writer and your audience, providing clarity and meaning. For example, Du Bois’s veil means very little until readers understand the deep racial divide that existed during his lifetime, including Jim Crow laws , segregation , and violent crimes committed against his fellow Black Americans.

Cultural Context

Sharing cultural context helps your readers understand elements of culture they may be unfamiliar with. Consider what background information you need to provide, especially information that is integral to readers’ understanding of the traditions, beliefs, and actions that relate to your artifact. Essentially, you will need to close the gap between your own culture and that of your readers.

Armed with your freewrite and your answers to the questions as a starting place, create your first draft. As you write, embed cultural context and explain the significance of your artifact in a way that is relatable and meaningful to your audience. Like Du Bois, try to use figurative language, such as similes or personification, in your description, and include the relevant sensory elements of the artifact: its appearance, taste, smell, sound, and feel. See Print or Textual Analysis: What You Read for definitions and examples of some figurative language, or consult this site . Consider using a graphic organizer like Figure 2.6 as a guide. Add more outer circles if needed, and be mindful of writing in a way that it is accessible and inclusive.

Remember that your first draft is just a starting point. The most important thing is to get your ideas on paper. This draft can be considered a test of sorts—one that determines what should and should not appear in the final paper.

Consider the following sensory description of Broadway in New York, written by British novelist Charles Dickens (1812–1870) in his book American Notes for General Circulation (1842). What does Dickens, as a British observer, note about this street in America? How does he use language to convey what he sees, hears, and smells? In what ways does he use language to convey a British viewpoint?

public domain text Warm weather! The sun strikes upon our heads at this open window, as though its rays were concentrated through a burning-glass; but the day is in its zenith, and the season an unusual one. Was there ever such a sunny street as this Broadway! The pavement stones are polished with the tread of feet until they shine again; the red bricks of the houses might be yet in the dry, hot kilns; and the roofs of those omnibuses look as though, if water were poured on them, they would hiss and smoke, and smell like half-quenched fires. No stint of omnibuses here! Half-a-dozen have gone by within as many minutes. Plenty of hackney cabs and coaches too; gigs, phaetons, large-wheeled tilburies, and private carriages—rather of a clumsy make, and not very different from the public vehicles, but built for the heavy roads beyond the city pavement. . . . [C]oachmen . . . in straw hats, black hats, white hats, glazed caps, fur caps; in coats of drab, black, brown, green, blue, nankeen, striped jean and linen; and there, in that one instance (look while it passes, or it will be too late), in suits of livery. Some southern republican that, who puts his blacks in uniform, and swells with Sultan pomp and power. Yonder, where that phaeton with the well-clipped pair of grays has stopped—standing at their heads now—is a Yorkshire groom, who has not been very long in these parts, and looks sorrowfully round for a companion pair of top-boots, which he may traverse the city half a year without meeting. Heaven save the ladies, how they dress! We have seen more colours in these ten minutes, than we should have seen elsewhere, in as many days. What various parasols! what rainbow silks and satins! what pinking of thin stockings, and pinching of thin shoes, and fluttering of ribbons and silk tassels, and display of rich cloaks with gaudy hoods and linings! The young gentlemen are fond, you see, of turning down their shirt-collars and cultivating their whiskers, especially under the chin; but they cannot approach the ladies in their dress or bearing, being, to say the truth, humanity of quite another sort. Byrons of the desk and counter, pass on, and let us see what kind of men those are behind ye: those two labourers in holiday clothes, of whom one carries in his hand a crumpled scrap of paper from which he tries to spell out a hard name, while the other looks about for it on all the doors and windows. end public domain text

Now, how might Dickens go on to provide context and make connections between British and American cultures so that readers understand both more keenly? Although American Notes is generally critical of the United States, this description creates a positive mood, as if Dickens recognizes something of home during his visit to Broadway—a cultural artifact. This recognition suggests that moments of unexpected joy can create connections between cultures.

Peer Review:

One of the most helpful parts of the writing process can be soliciting input from a peer reviewer. This input will be particularly helpful for this assignment if the peer reviewer is not a member of the culture you are writing about. An outsider’s view will help you determine whether you have included appropriate cultural context. Peer reviewers can use the following sentence starters to provide feedback.

• One piece of your writing I found meaningful was ________.
• Something new I learned about your culture is ________; you explained this well by ________.
• Something I was confused by was ________; I don’t understand this because ________.
• A major point that I think needs more detail or explanation is ________.
• In my opinion, the purpose of your paper is ________.
• To me, it seems that your audience is ________.
• I would describe the voice of your piece as ________.
• I think you could better build cultural context by ________.

Writing is a recursive process; you will push forward, step back, and repeat steps multiple times as your ideas develop and change. As you reread, you may want to add, delete, reorder, or otherwise change your draft. This response is natural. You may need to return to the brainstorming process to mine for new ideas or organizational principles.

As you reread and prepare for revisions, focus on the voice you have used. If a friend were to read your draft, could they “hear” you in it? If not, work on revising to create a more natural cadence and tone. Another area of focus should be to explain cultural context and build cultural bridges. Use your peer reviewer’s feedback to develop a piece that will be meaningful to your audience.

While describing your artifact is likely a deeply personal endeavor, an important part of writing is to consider your audience. Composition offers a unique opportunity to build and share cultural understanding. One way to achieve this goal is by using anti-racist and inclusive language. Try to view your composition from outside of your own experience.

• Is any language or are any ideas harmful or offensive to other cultures?
• Are you using the language of preference for a specified group?
• Can people of various abilities read and understand your writing?

One overarching strategy you can use for anti-racist revision is to constantly question commonly used words and phrases. For example, the word Eskimo is a European term used to describe people living in the Arctic without regard for differentiation. The term was later used to describe a popular frozen treat known as an Eskimo pie . Today, the term is considered offensive to Inuit communities—Indigenous people living in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. You can also make yourself aware of the evolving preferences for language use. For example, the term Negro gave way to African American , which is now giving way to the term Black . Finally, consider the use of the word see , for example, to mean “to understand”: Do you see what I mean? Is the use of see in this way inclusive of a visually impaired person who may be reading your text? To start, determine one or two places to include anti-racist or inclusive language or ideas in your writing, and build those into your piece.

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10 of the Best Poems about Identity and the Self

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Poetry and self-expression go hand in hand: we often treat them as synonymous. Of course, this is a relatively modern notion, largely the legacy of the Romantics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – and poets in the twentieth century in particular have sought to move away from this idea of poetry as a record of the poet’s own self. (See T. S. Eliot’s influential essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ for one prominent example.)

Nonetheless, many poets have written about the self, and their individual identity, as the following classic poems about selfhood demonstrate.

1. William Wordsworth, ‘ Tintern Abbey ’.

And passing even into my purer mind With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man’s life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love …

This is one of Wordsworth’s most famous poems and one of the best-loved of the English Romantic movement. In this blank-verse meditation prompted by the ruins of the medieval Welsh abbey that gives the poem its title (although the full title is considerably longer), Wordsworth muses upon the ‘true self’ which creativity allows the poet to recover.

The poem’s full title is ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above  Tintern Abbey , On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour’.

‘Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’ represented a turning-point in Wordsworth’s career, and in the development of English Romanticism. The features we now most readily associate with Romantic poetry – the lyric focus on the personal thoughts and feelings of the poet, and the way the individual links with his or her natural surroundings – were brought to new heights in this poem. We have analysed this poem here .

2. John Clare, ‘ I Am ’.

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes— They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live …

Clare’s later years were plagued by mental illness, delusion, and insanity, and ‘I Am’ was written in the 1840s when Clare was in the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, isolated from his friends and family. The poem reflects this troubled period in Clare’s life. two-word title unfolds and subtly alters its meaning across the course of the poem.

‘I am’, opens the poem, only to be immediately followed by a dash, marking it as a self-sufficient statement about the self. Not ‘I am  this ’ or ‘I am  that ’: simply ‘I am’. But then, once we reach the third line, ‘I am’ is being pressed into its more usual service: ‘I am the self-consumer of my woes’. Follow the link above to read the full poem and learn more about it.

3. Walt Whitman, ‘ Song of Myself ’.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass …

So begins this gloriously expansive nineteenth-century poem. When Whitman’s 1855 volume Leaves of Grass was published at Whitman’s own expense – the first edition containing just a dozen untitled poems – ‘Song of Myself’ headed the collection. This statement of selfhood contains the famous line ‘I am large, I contain multitudes’. The link above takes you to several choice excerpts from the longer poem.

4. Emily Dickinson, ‘ On a Columnar Self ’.

On a Columnar Self— How ample to rely In Tumult—or Extremity— How good the Certainty

That Lever cannot pry— And Wedge cannot divide Conviction—That Granitic Base— Though None be on our Side …

A typically unusual take on the concept of the self here, from one of American poetry’s most distinctive voices. Dickinson likens the self to a granite column – hard, sturdy, dependable, full of conviction – which, even if it finds itself unsupported by anyone else, will stand fast because it has ‘Rectitude’ on its side, and through such righteousness it will find itself closer to God.

5. Thomas Hardy, ‘ The Self-Unseeing ’.

Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in …

This short poem sees Hardy returning to his childhood home, and remembering how it used to be when he was there with other people, whose ‘feet’ once ‘walked in’. ‘The Self-Unseeing’ is about taking things for granted, about failing to appreciate what you have, especially your family, when you’re a child.

The poem’s title deftly combines two of Thomas Hardy’s trademark linguistic devices: the compound hyphenation and the use of the ‘un’-prefix. This creates further questions. ‘The Self-Unseeing’: how should we read this? As the self failing to see what’s around? Or as our inability to see ourselves ?

6. W. E. Henley, ‘ Invictus ’.

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed …

Clint Eastwood’s 2009 film about the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa is named Invictus after this poem, and for good reason: Nelson Mandela recited the poem to his fellow prisoners while he was incarcerated on Robben Island. ‘Invictus’ was partly inspired by Henley’s own struggles as an invalid (he lost a leg when young) and his determination to remain ‘bloody but unbowed’.

The poem introduced a couple of famous phrases into the language: ‘bloody, but unbowed’, and the final two lines: ‘I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul.’

7. Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘ My Own Heart Let Me More Have Pity On ’.

My own heart let me more have pity on; let Me live to my sad self hereafter kind, Charitable …

So begins this sonnet by one of the Victorian era’s greatest poets. Written in the mid-1880s in Ireland, when Hopkins was suffering from depression, this is one of his ‘Terrible Sonnets’, so named because of the dark moods of comfortlessness they record. In this sonnet, Hopkins begins by begging his own self to have pity on … his own heart.

8. D. H. Lawrence, ‘ Self-Pity ’.

A very short poem, this: in just four lines, Lawrence underscores how self-pity is a uniquely human flaw, not observable elsewhere in the natural world. ‘Self-Pity’ is what D. H. Lawrence himself described as a ‘pansy’: like the flower, this poem is a  pensée , a little thought, not meant to be anything grander or more sustained.

9. Sylvia Plath, ‘ Ariel ’.

This enigmatic poem uses the metaphor of an early morning horse-ride to explore numerous shifting notions of identity. The poem is often viewed as a reflection of Plath’s early morning poetry-writing ritual in the months leading up to her death: she would wake, write poetry, and then spend the rest of the day employed in household chores.

Read in this way, ‘Ariel’ can be understood as a powerful, if ambiguous, declaration of self-expression and freedom, albeit freedom desired rather than fully possessed.

In the last analysis, ‘Ariel’ is one of Plath’s most confidently assertive poems about freedom and escape, made all the more poignant by the fact that she so desperately needed such escape (and, ultimately, tragically, only a few months after writing ‘Ariel’, would succeed forever in escaping, or perhaps failing to escape). We have analysed this fascinating poem here .

10. Maya Angelou, ‘ Still I Rise ’.

This wonderfully self-assertive poem about picking yourself up and striving to achieve, even in the face of adversity, was used for an advertising campaign by the United Negro College Fund in the US, but its message of selfhood and determination is one that should be heard by all.

Discover more classic poetry with these short poems about death , these poems of seduction , and these classic and very short love poems .

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9 thoughts on “10 of the Best Poems about Identity and the Self”

The Northampton General Lunatic Asylum (now known as St Andrews Hospital) also held James Joyce’s daughter, for a time. Other famous inhabitants include Frank Bruno and… Michael Jackson! That’s enough useless trivia for today…

Fascinating! That’s an Only Connect question I’d love to see come up :)

Well, you will know the answer if it does!! :D

What a fabulous selection:))

Thank you! I’ve wanted to compile a list of poems on this theme for a while, but it’s taken a long time for choose just 10 greats :)

It’s brilliant!

This is a great list!

Thank you! :)

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• Identity of the Literary Text

In this Book

• By Mario J. Valdes and Owen Miller
• Published by: University of Toronto Press
• View Citation

Table of Contents

• Summary, Title Page, Copyright Page
• Owen Miller
• pp. vii-xxii
• Introduction
• The Identity of the Literary Text
• Jonathan Culler
• Part One: Textuality and Intertextuality
• Intertextual Identity
• Literary Identity and Contextual Difference
• Peter W. Nesselroth
• The Making of the Text
• Michael Riffaterre
• Part Two: Textual Deconstruction
• Topography and Tropography in Thomas Hardy's In Front of the Landscape
• J. Hillis Miller
• The (Self-)Identity of the Literary Text: Property, Propriety, Proper Place, and Proper Name in Wuthering Heights
• Patricia Parker
• Part Three: Hermeneutics
• The Faults of Vision: Identity and Poetry (A Dialogue of Voices, with an Essay on Kubla Khan)
• Cyrus Hamlin
• pp. 117-145
• The Identity of the Poetic Text in the Changing Horizon of Understanding
• Hans Robert Jauss
• pp. 146-174
• The Text as Dynamic Identity
• Paul Ricoeur
• pp. 175-186
• Part Four: Analytical Construction
• Literary Text, Its World and Its Style
• Lubomír Doležel
• pp. 187-203
• Feigning in Fiction
• Wolfgang Iser
• pp. 204-228
• Part Five: Ideological Perspectives
• The Stability of Literary Meaning
• Félix Martínez Bonati
• pp. 229-245
• The Politics of 'The Question of Style': Nietzsche/Hö[l]derlin
• Geoffrey Waite
• pp. 246-273
• Textual Identity and Relationship: A Metacritical Excursion into History
• Robert Weimann
• pp. 274-294
• Concepts of Fixed and Variable Identity
• Mario J. Valdes
• pp. 295-312
• pp. 313-324
• Index of Authors Cited
• pp. 325-330

Additional Information

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Ampydoo Cartoon #134

A peek-a-boo cartoon from Alan Michael Parker.

you became the holy water: A Poem by john compton

you loved the water. there, your epilepsy was more controlled.

Ampydoo Cartoon #133

An ostrich-hunt cartoon from Alan Michael Parker.

Ampydoo Cartoon #132

A Rothko cartoon from Alan Michael Parker.

psychopomp: A Poem by Adrian Sobol

there’s room enough for me in your dreams

Ki (Tree): A Poem by Tamiko Dooley

my grandmother tells a story from when she was little:

Two Poems by Lydia Buzzard

"The Name Lydia Means 'Coming From Lydia'" and "Why I Still Hum Our Songs"

Growing Pains

Loneliness replaces the minerals in the cavities of my bones because this is what happens when girls turn into women.

As Is: A Poem by Jillian Clasky

Lately I’ve been thinking about Ferris wheels:

Ampydoo Cartoon #131

A tomato cartoon from Alan Michael Parker.

Identity in “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Interaction with other human beings is the crucial element of life, as it directly affects the emotional and psychological development of the person and the formation of his/her worldview. Therefore, the society surrounding the person can be considered the most important factor influencing the formation of one’s views and opinions.

Though modern people often claim that the most important thing is to be faithful to one’s personal values, the fulfillment of values regarded as essential by the people surrounding the person remains much more influential. Cultural history is one of the vital factors that have an impact on the attitudes and beliefs prevailing in the society.

Therefore, cultural history often shapes the person’s sense of identity, as people regard their cultural background as the essential constituent of their personality. If the person loses the ability to distinguish between cultural history and his/her identity, the consequences can be rather destructive, as in the case of Okonkwo from Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart.”

The example of Okonkwo illustrates how cultural history can be connected to the sense of one’s identity. Okonkwo considers being devoted to the traditions originating from the history of his tribe, the most important duty in his life. His personality is inseparable from the culture of the environment where he grew up, as all of his actions are guided by the strong willing to be a respectful member of his community.

Okonkwo’s obsession with trying to demonstrate masculine traits is directly related to the cultural history of his tribe. One of the brightest episodes revealing the dominance of cultural history over Okonkwo’s personality is the scene of the murder of Ikemefuna. Though Okonkwo loves the boy and treats him as a part of his family, he ignores his personal feelings and attitudes in order to demonstrate his devotion to the traditions of his tribe and avoid being considered effeminate.

Okonkwo suppresses his personal wishes in favor of the traditions and beliefs of the tribe. Such an example demonstrates that cultural history can be not only an influential factor but a dominating one. Some people lose the ability to distinguish their personal beliefs and opinions from the attitudes of cultural history. In such cases, the identity of a person becomes inseparable from his/her cultural history.

The destructive nature of excessive devotion to cultural history is also expressed it the person’s inability to exist outside his/her culture. In such a case, a person can lose the motivation to live and experience severe psychological problems if certain events modify the cultural environment or force him/her to move to another environment.

For example, Okonkwo fails to adjust to the new conditions after the culture of his tribe experiences the influence of white Christians. Okonkwo’s sense of identity is that much inseparable from the cultural history that the changes in the culture of his tribe put a serious threat to his ability to lead a normal life.

Many people in the real world experience similar difficulties related to the significant stress caused by the impact of modern tendencies at the culture they feel indivisible with. Such a situation can have significant negative effects on the life of a person as the loss of the sense of identity makes the person disorientated in life goals and vulnerable.

The phenomenon of the deep connection between cultural history and the sense of identity has its roots in the history of mankind and the specifics of the human psyche. Most developed societies have put a strong emphasis on promoting the traditions and culture prevailing in them. Being devoted to the values dominating the culture of the society has always been one of the main requirements for achieving success in the community.

Therefore, people have always been forced to consider cultural history as an essential element of their sense of identity. The human psyche is another factor contributing to the significant role of cultural history. The human psyche can function well if the person fulfills the needs of a social creature. Existing outside of society causes severe negative psychological consequences.

The feeling of belonging to some community and the willingness to be respected and praised by the members of society is one of the essential needs of any human. Any action the person does has value only if other people witness and appreciate it. That is why the factors influencing the dominating views of society, such as cultural history, have a strong influence on the personality and shapes his/her sense of identity.

There is no doubt that humans are highly social creatures. The cultural history as an important heritage of the society plays a crucial role in forming a person’s sense of identity. The excessive influence of cultural history can lead to the situation when the person’s identity is inseparable from the traditions of its society. When the connection between cultural history and one’s sense of identity becomes too strong, the person can experience significant difficulties, as in the case of Okonkwo from “Things Fall Apart.”

• Literary Genre of Existentialist Novel
• Okonkwo's Identity in "Things Fall Apart"
• Cultural Conquest in “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe
• Chinua Achebe’s Depiction of Women in his Books
• "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe: Theme Study
• The Most Realistic Character in "The Iliad" by Homer
• The Archetype of Sacrifice in Literature
• "The Language of Blood" by Jane Jeong Trenka
• Greek Mythology - Medea by Euripides
• "Am I Blue" by Alice Walker: Analysis & Summary
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, May 9). Identity in "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe. https://ivypanda.com/essays/identity-in-things-fall-apart-by-chinua-achebe/

"Identity in "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe." IvyPanda , 9 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/identity-in-things-fall-apart-by-chinua-achebe/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Identity in "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe'. 9 May.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Identity in "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe." May 9, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/identity-in-things-fall-apart-by-chinua-achebe/.

1. IvyPanda . "Identity in "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe." May 9, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/identity-in-things-fall-apart-by-chinua-achebe/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Identity in "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe." May 9, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/identity-in-things-fall-apart-by-chinua-achebe/.

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Intersectionality — Narrative About Identity

Narrative About Identity

• Categories: Intersectionality

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Words: 500 |

Published: Mar 19, 2024

Words: 500 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction:, conclusion:, 1. the power of narratives:, 2. cultural narratives:, 3. personal narratives:, 4. the intersectionality of identity:, 5. challenging narratives:.

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In Tsotsi , characters have three kinds of identity, one false and two true: the false identity of stereotype, and the true identities of individual history and of universal human belonging. Memory is necessary to reject a false, stereotyped identity in favor of true individual and group identities. In the novel, these different identities, false and true, play out in the protagonist’s, Tsotsi ’s, life. Tsotsi’s real name is David, but after a traumatic experience in his childhood, in which policemen abducted his mother and he ended up homeless, he lost most of his memories and rejected his true identity. When he joined a group of homeless children who scavenged and stole their food, a shopkeeper called him a tsotsi —a word meaning “gangster” or “thug”—and he took this stereotyped identity as his name. When he is Tsotsi, a stereotype without a memory or history, people do not recognize him as a human individual. As a gang leader, his potential victims—for example, the shopkeeper Cassim and the beggar Morris Tshabalala —find him so frightening that they literally cannot see or remember his face. Their inability to see Tsotsi’s face represents how his stereotyped identity strips him of his true identity.

Once Tsotsi begins to remember his past and sympathize with other people, however, he gradually recognizes himself as a member of humanity: he sees himself dimly reflected in a shop window and realizes his reflection could represent not only himself but his fellow gang members Boston and Butcher , or even his potential victim Morris Tshabalala. By connecting his own image with those of other human beings, Tsotsi is coming to realize one of his true identities—as a human being like other human beings. Finally, when Tsotsi fully regains his memories and decides, counter to the tsotsi stereotype, to become an adoptive father to a baby, he reclaims his full name and individual identity: David Madondo. Thus, Tsotsi suggests that to reject the false identities that stereotypes impose on us, we need to remember our individual histories and embrace our group identity as human beings.

Identity and Memory ThemeTracker

Identity and Memory Quotes in Tsotsi

[Tsotsi’s] knowledge was without any edge of enjoyment. It was simply the way it should be, feeling in this the way other men feel when they see the sun in the morning. The big men, the brave ones, stood down because of him, the fear was of him, the hate was for him. It was all there because of him. He knew he was . He knew he was there, at that moment, leading the others to take one on the trains.

[Tsotsi’s] own eyes in front of a mirror had not been able to put together the eyes, and the nose, and the mouth and the chin, and make a man with meaning. His own features in his own eyes had been as meaningless as a handful of stones picked up at random in the street outside his room. He allowed himself no thought of himself, he remembered no yesterdays, and tomorrow existed only when it was the present, living moment. He was as old as that moment, and his name was the name, in a way, of all men.

They stayed that way until the street cried, then laughter, and Soekie started her song again at the beginning, staying like that, Boston still, Tsotsi seemingly the same as always, the one in disbelief, the other at the explosive moment of action, and this moment precipitated when Boston whispered: ‘You must have a soul Tsotsi. Everybody’s got a soul. Every living human being has got a soul!’

The knife was not only his weapon, but also a fetish, a talisman that conjured away bad spirits and established him securely in his life.

He didn’t see the man, he saw the type.

This was man. This small, almost ancient, very useless and abandoned thing was the beginning of a man.

Tsotsi knew one thing very definitely now. Starting last night, and maybe even before that, because sitting there with a quiet mind to the events of the past hours it seemed almost as if there might have been a beginning before the bluegum trees, but regardless of where or when, he had started doing things that did not fit into the pattern of his life. There was no doubt about this. The pattern was too simple, too clear, woven as it had been by his own hands, using his knife like a shuttle to carry the red thread of death and interlace it with others stained in equally sombre hues. The baby did not belong and certainly none of the actions that had been forced on him as a result of its presence, like buying baby milk, or feeding it or cleaning it or hiding it with more cunning and secrecy than other people hid what they had from him.

Gumboot had been allocated a plot near the centre. He was buried by the Reverend Henry Ransome of the Church of Christ the Redeemer in the township. The minister went through the ritual with uncertainty. He was disturbed, and he knew it and that made it worse. If only he had known the name of the man he was burying. This man, O Lord! What man? This one, fashioned in your likeness.

It was the awareness of alternatives that disturbed Tsotsi and seemed to paralyse his will. Up to that moment he had lived his life as the victim of dark impulses. They had been ready, rising to his moments of need all through his life. Where they came from he never knew, and their reasons for coming he had never questioned. What he realized now was that something had tampered with the mechanism that had governed his life, inhibiting its function.

Are his hands soft? he would ask himself, and then shake his head in anger and desperation at the futility of the question. But no sooner did he stop asking it than another would occur. Has he got a mother? This question was persistent. Hasn’t he got a mother? Didn’t she love him? Didn’t she sing him songs? He was really asking how do men come to be what they become. For all he knew others might have asked the same question about himself. There were times when he didn’t feel human. He knew he didn’t look it.

What is sympathy? If you had asked Tsotsi this, telling him that it was his new experience, he would have answered: like light, meaning that it revealed. Pressed further, he might have thought of darkness and lighting a candle, and holding it up to find Morris Tshabalala within the halo of its radiance. He was seeing him for the first time, in a way that he hadn’t seen him before, or with a second sort of sight, or maybe just more clearly. […]

But that wasn’t all. The same light fell on the baby, and somehow on Boston too, and wasn’t that the last face of Gumboot Dhlamini there, almost where the light ended and things weren’t so clear anymore. And beyond that still, what? A sense of space, of an infinity stretching away so vast that the whole world, the crooked trees, the township streets, the crowded, wheezing rooms, might have been waiting there for a brighter, intense revelation.

I must give him something, he thought. I must give this strange and terrible night something back for all it has given me. With the instinct of his kind, he turned to beauty and gave back the most beautiful thing he knew.

‘Mothers love their children. I know. I remember. They sing us songs when we are small. I’m telling you, tsotsi. Mothers love their children.’

After this there was silence for the words to register and make their meaning, for Tsotsi to stand up and say in reply: ‘They don’t. I’m telling you, I know they don’t,’ and then he walked away.

Petah turned to David. ‘Willie no good. You not Willie. What is your name? Talk! Trust me, man. I help you.’

David’s eyes grew round and vacant, stared at the darkness. A tiny sound, a thin squeaking voice, struggled out: ‘David…’ it said, ‘David! But no more! He dead! He dead too, like Willie, like Joji.’

So he went out with them the next day and scavenged. The same day an Indian chased him away from his shop door, shouting and calling him a tsotsi. When they went back to the river that night, they started again, trying names on him: Sam, Willie, and now Simon, until he stopped them.

‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Tsotsi.’

The baby and David, himself that is, at first confused, had now merged into one and the same person. The police raid, the river, and Petah, the spider spinning his web, the grey day and the smell of damp newspapers were a future awaiting the baby. It was outside itself. He could sympathize with it in its defencelessness against the terrible events awaiting it.

‘What are you going to do with him?’

‘Keep him.’

He threw back his head, and she saw the shine of desperation on his forehead as he struggled with that mighty word. Why, why was he? No more revenge. No more hate. The riddle of the yellow bitch was solved—all of this in a few days and in as short a time the hold on his life by the blind, black, minute hands had grown tighter. Why?

‘Because I must find out,’ he said.

‘Why Boston? What did do it?’

A sudden elation lit up Boston’s face; he tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move, and his nose started throbbing, but despite the pain he whispered back at Tsotsi: ‘You are asking me about God.’

‘You are asking me about God, Tsotsi. About God, about God.’

‘Come man and join in the singing.’

‘I’m telling you anybody can come. It’s the House of God. I ring His bell. Will you come?’

‘Listen tonight, you hear. Listen for me. I will call you to believe in God.’

It was a new day and what he had thought out last night was still there, inside him. Only one thing was important to him now. ‘Come back,’ the woman had said. ‘Come back, Tsotsi.’

I must correct her, he thought. ‘My name is David Madondo.’

He said it aloud in the almost empty street, and laughed. The man delivering milk heard him, and looking up said, ‘Peace my brother.’

‘Peace be with you’, David Madondo replied and carried on his way.

The slum clearance had entered a second and decisive stage. The white township had grown impatient. The ruins, they said, were being built up again and as many were still coming in as they carried off in lorries to the new locations or in vans to the jails. So they had sent in the bulldozers to raze the buildings completely to the ground.

They unearthed him minutes later. All agreed that his smile was beautiful, and strange for a tsotsi, and that when he lay there on his back in the sun, before someone had fetched a blanket, they agreed that it was hard to believe what the back of his head looked like when you saw the smile.

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Two New Calls for Papers: "Crisis and Conflict in the Premodern World" (Edited Volume) + "History and Identity: Essays in Honor of Chris Jones" (Journal, Parergon)

Call for Contributors: Edited Collection on 'Crisis and Conflict in the Premodern World'

In the popular culture of the West, the Chinese word for 'crisis' has misconstrued the two Chinese characters fEtl (weiji or wéiji) to mean danger and opportunity. This misperception has been popularized since the late 1930s but gained increased currency with J. F. Kennedy's repetition of the trope during his election campaign stump speeches of 1959-60. While the first character wei does indeed mean danger or precariousness, the second Chinese character ji is polysemous and therefore far more enigmatic than mere 'opportunity' - it is something more like 'change point'. The proposed collection seeks to the explore 'dangers' afforded by premodern crises as well as the decisive 'change points', the catalysts, and the stimulants they embodied in diverse socio-cultural and political contexts. Some ideas that might be considered but not limited to:

• Premodern and modern perceptions, descriptions, and conceptualizations of crises; narratives of contemporary and past crises (in literature, propaganda, including artistic and material culture);
• Crisis and rhetoric, strategic spin-doctoring of crises (perceived and actual);
• Symbolic crises; necessary crises;
• Genres of crises: religious, diplomatic, political/geopolitical; dynastic/monarchical/succession;
• 'Private' and public crises: marital, familial, households and courts; succession issues and dynastic disputes
• Turning points/change/transformation: crisis and renewal;
• Victory and defeat, resilience and opportunity; leveraging crisis - who won, who lost, who profited.

We particularly welcome contributions outside the medieval and/or European context, alongside contributions from PGR/ECR and independent scholars, though all are welcome to submit a proposal. Please send a title and abstract of approx. 250 words along with a short bio (not CV) to [email protected] and [email protected] by 13 December 2024. First drafts of chapters will be due September 2025.

Parergon 43.2

Special Issue - Call for Papers

History and Identity: Essays in Honour of Chris Jones Guest edited by Elisabeth Rolston, Madi Williams, and Gabrielle

Associate Professor Chris Jones (1977-2024) was a thoughtful and innovative scholar whose research ranged from fourteenth-century French political thought to the significance of medieval and early modern material in Aotearoa New Zealand. His service to ANZAMEMS as President (2015-2021) and co-convenor, alongside Madi Williams, of the 2024 conference in Christchurch makes the Association's journal Parergon a fitting platform for a special issue in his honour. His sudden death in July 2024 at the height of his career marks a terrible loss to medieval and early modern studies in Australia and New Zealand.

The proposed Special Issue focuses on the theme of 'History and Identity', exploring the connections between history - including historiography, heritage and material culture, ano myth and legend - and identity formation. It aims to draw together the various threads of Jones' work, and welcomes contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Medieval and early modern legacies, including material culture and the role of medieval/ early modern artefacts in modern identity formation
• The relevance of medieval and early modern studies
• Medieval political thought, especially scholarship engaging with new sources, approaches, and perspectives
• History of monarchy, particularly late-medieval France and the western Empire
• The role of historical narrative and understandings of the past in shaping medieval ideas of power and rulership

In recognition of Jones' tireless support of emerging historians, proposals are especially welcomed from postgraduate students and early-career researchers.

Please send a title and abstract of approx. 150 words along with a short bio to [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] by Friday 5 September 2024.