Identity Crisis

In class, we discussed the number of identities a person can have. But, can you be more than one at the same time? Or is there always pressure to be one more than the other? To be perfectly honest, I think there is always going to be a struggle between identities. I believe that part of being human automatically entails complexity because each person is built by these various identities . I cannot imagine not being a student, a daughter, a friend, an army kid, a vegetarian, an Italian, an Irish, an American etc. I believe that these multiple identities are what complete me as a person. As to the question: is everything you do a performance? I would have to respond: no. I know that for myself, my identities are of my own making. A false person, on the other hand, who pretends to be someone they are not would possess an untrue identity and would be performing to their audience, shifting themselves for their surroundings. Performance, for me, involves "acting" which automatically makes me think of a person being fake.

The beauty of our race is that we are all different. Our multiple identities are what make us that way. Each person has a different combination, causing them to be unique.

This Real Happily Ever After

In the story "This Blessed House," the readers learn of an Indian-American couple who have rushed into marriage. Sanjeev decides to marry Twinkle because of his loneliness and their common appreciation of P.G. Wodehouse. Instead of being the normal Indian housewife, Sanjeev finds that Twinkle cooks without any recipes, does not rush to move in, and leaves her undergarments on the floor. Twinkle is curious to the world that surrounds her, a curiosity that troubles grounded Sanjeev. The rift between these two opposites grows as Twinkle finds a porcelain figurine of Christ left behind by the previous owners of their house. Although they are both Hindu, Twinkle does not get rid of the figurine and begins to find more and more religious objects throughout their new home. When Twinkle tells Sanjeev she hates him as she sits in the bath tub, her face covered in a blue mask, she has become the hard figurines that she collects.  Lahiri displays through this story the struggle that occurs in marital relationships.  The struggle that these two people experience as they begin their lives together will make or break their relationship. I believe that Lahiri's purpose is to show that no matter how stable a relationship may seem, the cracks will always begin to show.  But, the journey of marriage is the discovery of the acceptance of the other individual and the realization that marriage continues after the actual wedding.  No matter the people involved, marriage is work and will always be.

Placed in Displacement

I was thinking as I tried to choose which blogs to put in my portfolio, if I covered all of my thoughts on humanistic studies. When I entered the course, I assumed we would be studying human behavior rather than emotion. I cannot express fully how pleased I was to find out that we were studying more than just behavior but feelings of belonging and place. I was most intrigued by the section about place. As I have said before, place is something I am not really familiar with. I cannot explain how different home is for an army child. A sense of belonging, to me, includes more than just a set of walls and an address. I have experienced many different types of homes-from townhouses to single-family homes. I've lived in Texas, Tennessee, Kansas, Virginia and most recently, Germany. I suppose home is a place where my family is. Along with that, I guess what I understand the most is displacement. The easiest way to put this is to state that instead of understanding place, I understand best displacement. I can honestly say I have never felt as if I really belonged anywhere. Yet, I never have felt as if I've missed out. Is the truth that we either know place or adjust to displacement? Or maybe, they're both just as important. And which is a better lifestyle?

Universal Classics

When a book is called a "classic," one assumes that it defines its time and will forever be a work of true literature. But, when I think of Shakespeare I think, truly, that all his plays are greater than classics. They override time. They exist and make sense in a world completely different then they were originally intended for.
I have shown in previous blogs my enthusiasm for Shakespeare. When Professor Ambrose asked if it was possible that the films suggest Shakespeare is universal, I agreed completely. Each play has an underlying emotion: love, jealousy, or anger, that any person can understand. Perhaps, the fact that Shakespeare still manages to touch his audiences centuries after the original compositions is what causes him to be so universal. Shakespeare's plays have endless adaptions-in books, movies and plays. We modernize Shakespeare over and over again because of his ability to relate to anyone in different aspects of life. Shakespeare's plays are read or acted repeatedly but they never fail to please their audience or to dramatize the realities everyone faces. We appreciate the exaggerated drama that we know we will never fail to understand because all of the emotions expressed are human through and through.