Flight Case

Shaping Identity

What is identity? Identity is what helps you develop your personality. There are many factors that can help you become the person you are. Shaping our identity is important because this will make you the person who you will be for the rest of your life. Some of these factors can be things that happen in our environment. These things can affect us in many ways. It can be in a bad way and also in a good way. However, we have the power to listen to what people say and ignore what will makes us feel worthless. We can see in the novel "Flight" that making comments towards people can shape your personality and mark you for the rest of your life. Therefore, I think that society has to do a lot with shaping our personality.

People can hurt other with their comments, and mark them for the rest of their lives. Moreover, these are some factors that can low your self-esteem believing in what other people think and say about you. We can see this example when Auntie Z's boyfriend hurts Zits and tells him that "Don't tell anybody. Everybody knows you're a liar. Nobody loves you anymore" (Alexie, 161). We can realize that besides getting hurting him physically, he hurts him emotionally. He makes Zits feel worthless that no one cares about his health. He will have no one who will save him from this tragedy. We can see that he gets heartbroken, and no one will love him as his mom did. He learns that he can't trust anybody when Zits says I learned how to stop crying. I learned how to hide myself. I learned how to be cold and numb" (Alexie, 161). This guy marks completely Zits life making him cold as a stone. He learned from this experience that he can't show his emotions. He has to leave all his pain inside his heart and cry inside that no one will see how much he suffers. All this pain is turned into hatred toward society.

We can also appreciate in this story that being from a different culture and what people believe about what they do can mark our identity. "All of them are going to start drinking booze. And their children will drink booze. And their grandchildren and great-children will drink booze" (Alexie, 65). If we follow our elders, it is more than likely that we will end up like them. Therefore, we can see that everyone that is an Indian is going to end up being an alcoholic. People have this mentality that we have to be like the rest. What other people say influences enormously our personality. We can Zits follows the same track as the rest of the Indians. "I don't know any other Native Americans, except the homeless Indians who wander around downtown Seattle. I like to run away from my foster homes and get drunk with those street Indians" (Alexie, 7). He does this to be like the rest. He wants to be part of the group, so he thinks that drinking is going to help him fit in the group. Therefore, society has a big roll to shape our identity.

Another factor that can form our identity is others people words and how they treat us.