Personal Identity Who Are You Essay - 1399 Words

Identity, an ambiguous idea, plays an important part in today’s world. To me identity can be defined as who a person is or what differentiates one person from another. Identity would be a person’s name, age, height, ethnicity, personality, and more. A quote by Anne Sexton states â€Å"It doesnt matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was†(Anne Sexton). This quote helps me define identity because I believe it is saying that identity is what people are remembered by. When some people think of identity, words such as, uniqueness, distinctiveness, or individuality may come to mind. However, I disagree with this because when I think of identity I think of mimicry, self-consciousness, or opinions. I think of words such†¦show more content†¦Your personality and actions will become very much alike and at times may not differ. So if people want to see what they act like they can most likely observe an old and close friend. A person’s culture would be an example of how identity is patterned or mimicked. One definition of culture that I agree with corresponds to The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition which states that â€Å"culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, affective understanding that is learned through a process of socialization, and distinguishing one from another†(Maximizing Study 1). In other words, culture can be copied within the same cultural group, but it still distinguishes one cultural group from another. An example of culture being patterned would be in â€Å"The Necklace† by Guy de Maupassant. In the story a character is born into a poor family. When the character grows up she is still poor. But she envisions herself becoming rich and she does this by wearing a diamond necklace, that she thinks is real. So the pattern would be that she lives a life of poverty and so did her parents. She tries to break the pattern by visualizing herself b eing rich and ends up continuing the pattern because she loses the necklace and replaces it with a real one, which makes her poorer than she was to begin with. Even though parts of identity can be mimicked,Show MoreRelatedPersonal and Cultural Identity in Things Fall Apart and â€Å"I Lost My Talk†1605 Words   |  7 PagesThursday, January 17 Personal and Cultural Identity in Things Fall Apart and â€Å"I Lost My Talk† Identity can be explained as the state or fact of being a specific person or thing. [definition is good, but needs to be more specific] A specific person or thing can be defined by his/her personality, interests, family, community or culture. [connect your definition to the novel and poem—that’s why previous sentence was inserted] In both Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and in Rita Joe’sRead MoreHume s Identity Of A Man Is A Fiction888 Words   |  4 PagesHume believes that personal identity is not the feeling of existence of what is called the self as many philosophers believe. He proposes that every idea is the product of one impression. The self is not one impression, but is all of our impressions that combined Impressions could be pain, pleasure, grief, or joy, but they do not happen at the same time, they follow each other. Hume uses the theater analogy to explain this (Hume). The mind is the stage where perceptions make their appearance. TheyRead MorePersonal Identity : The Black Rose Killer988 Words   |  4 PagesCatholicism and he killed people on the side. He has the same identity because he is the same person and same soul, but is he really the same identity? 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In response to this examples of cases such as amnesia will also be taken into considerationRead MoreIdentity and Self-Actualization Essays713 Words   |  3 PagesIDENTITY AND SELF-ACTUALISATION Before you can answer the question what am I, you need to first answer the question who am I and what do I stand for? Before you are able to set a goal for yourself you need to figure out what it is that you actually want to achieve in life. Do you want to achieve wealth, fame, a certain level of education or do you want to achieve contentment, inner peace or perhaps contribute to a change in your environment, community or the world? Are your goals directed inwardRead MoreHume Personal Identity Essay1032 Words   |  5 Pagesinfluences within the world, it can often be difficult to determine who we are and how we became the person that we are today. Although many people believe that from the time we are born, we begin to develop our own personal identities that will differentiate us from everyone else within the world, others believe that our identities are a consequent of the influences that we encounter throughout our lives. Personal identity is the concept that you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of yourRead MoreImportance Of Personal Identity767 Words   |  4 PagesOnly have lived twenty years so far, I’ve learned that personal identity is one of the most important parts of a person. Personal identity is the basic outline of who we are and what society views us as. Sometimes society or even others around us may not like who we are or what we stand for and may try to change us. This is not our fault as the individual; society tends to dislike and fear what it doesn’t understand or what it views as different. Reading short stories such as â€Å"The Birthmark†, â€Å"A