Identity Final

Conner Evans                                                                                                                          Page 1

September 10, 2014

English 1100-37

Professor Young

Is Identity Important?

            Our Identity is important because it’s based on who we are, who we've been, and who we think we will become. If you do not know your identity, then you do not know who you really are because identity is what defines you and something without a definition is nothing at all. It’s a person’s conception and expression of him or her own self. It can be individuality, group, national or cultural. Identity is a part of the soul of each person. If we lose sense of identity and if we are not aware about self-identity, we will live in this world without soul. It is like eating food without any taste buds. There will be no inner pride or joy. Identity can be distinct characteristics; it can be a form of identification, or something that makes someone different from everyone else. It’s who we are, who we’ve been, and who we will think we will become. It’s our identity and it’s very important.

           A single identity is what defines a person from the next person. It allows us to characterize differences and behaviors to allow people to be different and everyone to be their own individual. An abundance of different characteristics go into creating ones identity. A characteristic is a feature or quality belonging typically to a person, place, or thing and serves to identify it. The way one should look at a single characteristic is that it is one little piece of the whole identity like apple is only one of the ingredients to an apple pie. However a person’s identity is not just all characteristics but is a main part of the very complex puzzle. Characteristics can be as simple as someone’s taste in food, music, clothing, and may be as

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complex as culture and religious background. There really is an endless amount of characteristics and an even more endless amount of combinations of characteristics that make up a person’s identity.

            Another piece to the puzzle of a healthy identity is a strong signature, or something that makes an individual stand out. What that means is it’s a broader object, place, or thing that can more easily define someone without getting into tremendous detail. It’s simply something that you can say defines you. For example I use to be very into playing guitar and that playing guitar was my identity. When I played guitar everything became clearer. It defined me in that I loved music. I had the rhythm, the passion for it, and strength to stand out or work with others to make sweet music. After reading Gloria Anzaldua How to Tame a Wild Tongue I now know her signature something is her language. “I am my language. Until I take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.” Her language is who she is. It’s her culture, it’s how she expresses herself, and is how she communicates to others. The biggest thing about her is her need to express herself and language identifies that. If language is who she is then being a writer is also who she is. Those two things go two and two and all she ever really wanted to do is express herself. In a way it’s her way of rebellion in that expression in her culture as a woman is frowned upon, but being a writer and using her language in the way she does is a backdoor entrance to herself but also allows her to embrace her culture. Gloria knows who she is and has a powerful identity that she can express through her signature something.

            What happens when you lose your identity? When we lose our sense of identity, it can be as serious as creating a mental illness, the most common being depression. Depression is a

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disease where one experiences intense sadness including feeling helpless, hopeless, and worthless. This can last for many days to weeks and keep you from functioning normally. Usually to get out of something like that one would have to endure therapy or medication. It is not just depression someone may feel when they lose their identity, there are even more cases of more serious happenings. Many loss of identity lead a staggering amount of suicides. This is a prime example of why identity is so important. What happens is that once you lose your identity, people tend to think they really are worthless and words like “lost cause” start to turn up, and before you know it someone close to you such as an associate, a friend, even a family member is lost from this world. What really happens is that if no one has an identity we become a society of mindless zombies with no self-expression. In the Book Brave New World the setting is a world where everyone is the same and no one is different. A world where self-expression is the root of evil and that people only survive because they are programed to a job given to them at birth.

            Identity is a person’s conception and expression of his or her own self. It can be individuality, group, national or cultural. Identity is a part of the soul of each person or group.  Loss of identity is a tragedy due to how significant it is. Identity can be distinct characteristics; it can be a form of identification, or even an act someone does that makes them different. Most of all our Identity is important because it makes us who we are, shows us who we've been, and makes clear to us who we may become.