The Influence Of Identity In Jerry Spinelli's Milkweed

Every type of person struggles with a thing we call, identity. Personal identity come from multiple factors from our race to our own personal beliefs. Some people say we have the choice to choose our own identity, but is that always true? No, in fact other people can affect how we look and essentially identity our self’s. In the article called.

When her family is forced into the Warsaw ghetto, he happily travels with them, unaware of the grave danger. Misha forges important relationships in the Warsaw ghetto against the backdrop of the Holocaust. Body Paragraph 1: Misha Pilsudski is indeed a very brave boy after all. He survived a lot of things as an orphan. The main character can have different types of mood for example, sometimes he feels stressed, bored, happy or anxious.

People thirst to discover their identity. Most will believe that they discovered and made their identity, but they didn’t. In Hal Borland’s “When The Legends Die”, It shows how a young indian boy’s (Thomas Black Bull) identity changes throughout his miserable life. Identities are formed more by society than by their owners.

Imagine being a Gypsy stuck in Poland during the Holocaust and how horrifying it would be. In the book Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, A gypsy boy who does not even know his real name lives on the streets of Warsaw, Poland and smuggles alongside other orphans. He is eventually given the name Misha Pilsudski by a boy who looks out for him, Uri. Misha admires the Jackboots and thinks that they are fighting for him, but he finds out that he is wrong when he gets sent to a ghetto. Misha lives among other innocent people who were targeted and abused by the Jackboots just because of their beliefs.

Are you who you are because of individuality, or because of someone else? Truth is, the answer can be either one. The Marrian Webster Dictionary goes on to define identity as “who someone is”, but there is much more to it. Identity works in many ways. For my definition of identity, I believe that identity is how you present yourself to society.

In the essay, In Defense of Masks, Kenneth Gergen’s view on a identity (mask) is that people do not develop a single identity. He explains how people’s masks modify in order to gain approval from a specific group of people. Individuals use masks to create a false identity. In over time, those masks become reality. Gergen sees an identity as a way to develop a unique mask.

In academic article “Who Am I” by Beverly Daniel Tatum; she talks about the complexity of identity, which defined as a person. She describes the multiple identities of different kinds of people and their significance in the community. She illustrate the how person past, historical event, family background, experiences, and thought of person has impact on the personal identification. The concept of past, present, and future, those characterize the person identity. She explains how gander of person is the part of identity, which build identity.

Identity is a factor that has the ability to change. Misha’s identity changed throughout “Milkweed.” Misha changed from Stopthief to Misha Pilsudski to Misha Milgrom to Jack/Poppynoodle. Identity is serious because someone could take your identity. It’s something we should pay attention to.

According to the spiritual traditions of India, not knowing your identity is the basic cause of suffering. The Greeks also thought the same and that may be the reason why the words—Know Thyself—were inscribed above the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Before we ask any other questions about life, this fundamental question must be honestly answered, if we want to thrive in life. People will tell you who they are by stating their name, their occupation, their ethnicity, their achievements, etc. Our identity is often associated with the roles we play or the stuff we have.

Whether it be in the workplace or walking down the street there is always going to be more pressure and judgment being focused on women than men. Why is this? Gender plays a big role on the reflection of our identities to society. We have been brought to believe that there are certain ways men and women should and should not act, dress and talk. These social norms do not just apply to what is acceptable in regards to public safety but rather, it is used as a way to control and evaluate behavior.

Later, the cultural critic Stuart Hall has opined about the changing nature of identity. He says that there is no fixed identity that can be attributed to an individual for his life period; it evolves through several changes in each phase of life. So it can be understood that formation of identity involves several steps: construction, reconstruction and deconstruction. The politics behind this formation may depend on the nature of identity that an individual tries to hold. Indeed, the cultural critic Kobena Mercer reminds us: “One thing at least is clear - identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis, when something

In John Knowles’s novel A Separate Peace Identity is shown as what defines us and makes us be placed in other peoples perspectives. An author can use identity to place characters in the readers mind to portray them a certain way, just as John Knowles did in A Separate peace. An identity can be defined as who a person is inside and out.

Identity is something people tend to think of as consistent, however that is far from the case. The Oxford English dictionary states that the definition of identity is “ The characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is.” The allegorical novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding tackles the issue of identity while following young boys from the ages twelve and down as they struggle with remembering their identities when trapped on a deserted island. Identity is affected by the influence of society and how individuals influence society based on their identities. By looking at Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the Stanford Prison Experiment, and Sigmund Freud 's philosophical ideas, it becomes clear that identity is affected by society through peer pressure and social normalities.

Identity is simply all-or nothing. The second belief that he targets regards the importance of personal identity; important matters involving survival, memory and responsibility.

Identity creates unique individuals and is needed in order to maintain a healthy community. By erasing somebody’s identity, their whole being is taken away and all that is left is a mindless body. Stability keeps a society from completely collapsing in on itself, but it is important that there is some leeway. Not everybody is pleased by the same things and in order to keep everybody happy there needs to be a balance. These three principles are important in every society but the World State took them so far that it ruined every member of their society.