Identity

Identity, the hardest question to answer: Who am I? Personality traits that people pick up from past experiences and knowledge help define who they are in a certain setting. People live their lives in a constant search for who they are, or what they like; while everyone is busy making plans, the perception of their surroundings change what they want. A persons identity is true to only the setting that they currently are in; Their personality may remain constant while they assume the role of someone different at that specific time.

I'm proposing that there are basically two different sections of each persons identity. The first is their personality, this is all their quarks and tendencies that differentiate that person from someone else. The second is their perception of themselves, this is what that person will wear, say, or do, in a certain situation because that is how they perceive themselves acting in that environment. This self-perception has the greatest influence on that persons identity at that point in time. The personality is the most important thing people can change so that they can really better themselves rather than just changing their self-perception.

Looking at the character Dee from the story “Everyday Use” you notice her self-perception drastically change while her personality basically stays the same. Growing up she was the oldest of 2 girls, got away with burning down a house, and made

Billings, 2

her poor family scrounge to send her to college. Her early life formed her selfish, self-centered, and bratty personality. While attending college her self-perception changed from Dee, the poor country girl, into Wangero, the cultured, ideological, freedom fighting woman. What she doesn't realize is that her personality has barely changed at all, she is still selfish, and believes she deserves everything just because she wants it.

Learning about her peoples history of oppression has motivated her in the wrong ways to go back home. She wants the cultural items of her families past to show off her lineage rather than to preserve its sentimentality. While knowing what she's doing, her selfish ambitions justify her taking things with practical everyday uses and using them as decoration: “Maggie can't appreciate these quilts! She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.”(Walker 289). Her personality forces her to take what she wants, and she is taking what her self-perception wants. If she had spent more time changing her personality rather than becoming what people wanted her to be, she would have fixed her past personality faults while become a stronger, better person more centered as herself.

In the movie Multiplicity you watch the construction of 3 different identities from one personality. #2 is created desperately to give Doug some free time with his family and is depended on to

Billings, 3

help Doug. Just his purpose for being alive would put him in the environment