Blog 11

Every person has their own persona that becomes their self identity. It is the identity they identify with and how they want others to see them. Though a person may have a certain way they see their identity one day, it is possible for that view to change. Though forming and changing one’s identity is dependent on the outside environment the person lives and experiences. In her article, “Life’s Stories,” Julie Beck explains how people create a self narrative throughout their lives, which develops into their self identity. Beck also explains how it is outside sources as well as stories that help shape that narrative or identity. She says, “People take the stories that surround them — fictional tales, news articles, apocryphal family anecdotes — then identify with them and borrow from them while fashioning their own self-conceptions,”(Beck). There is so much that happens in a person’s daily life that it would be impossible to take every single piece of information that happens to them, so when Beck says that we take and borrow from the narratives around us, she is right. People learn from the different events that have happened in their lives and they take that information and apply it to their daily lives. People can also learn from the stories that their family or friends tell them. Remembering the moral of the story, or the different aspects of a story all play an important part in shaping a person’s identity. The reason why many stories are told is so that its message can be passed down from generation to generation. In an interview by Sophie Horton with Ken MacArthur does just that. Ken describes how he had an encounter with a man at his work. Ken explains how the man was dressed like a bum and because of that, he misjudged him. It is after Ken learns the truth about this man that he describes the moral of this story. “Next time you see someone who you don’t know, even if they’re a bum, no matter what, they are still people, something happened to those people. No one grows up saying I want to be a bum,”(MacArthur 4:25). This use of storytelling is how different messages are passed down throughout history. By telling his story, Ken is spreading the message to be kind to all people and to treat everyone like a human being. This narrative not only obviously affected Ken’s self identity, but it also has the potential to affect every person that he tells it to. Self identity does not have to be just influenced by the events that happen to a person personally, but it can also be affected by narratives that are fiction and nonfiction.