The Search for an Identity - Essay Sample

Introduction

Personal identity is one of the central cores to living a worthwhile and fulfilled life. Anybody who goes through with life without realizing what he or she believes and stands for is typically living in denial as well as incomplete life. The individuals who lack apprehension of their identity often accept others people's opinion and the way they are stereotyped. Ideally, this is an unfortunate position which is often t characterize much African-American literature. In "native son" Richard Wright portray Thomas bigger as one of the individuals who has lost their identity and is grappling with the inferiority complex (Wright, 42). Bigger is one character who ideally represents the condition of numerous African-American people who do not know what their identity means thus they follow the stereotypical roles for blacks.

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The need for self-identity seems to be one the major themes in Richard writ's "Native son." Readers are introduced to Thomas Bigger a 20-year old who stay with her mother and sisters but they are dented with poverty, and Thomas compares himself to the well-off white people (Wright, 44). Throughout the text, Thomas is unsettled because he is longing for a sense to "belong" to America yet he is American. Bigger's attempt to find an expression of his identity is curtailed by numerous factors inherent in economic, political and cultural fabrics of the American systems. Richard posits in his book that the black person in America is denied power to choose and this consequently drives them to manifest destiny.

The American system is seen to be structured in a way that thwarts any attempt by black people to aspire for social mobility due to lack of opportunities and access to proper education. In the case of Bigger, he is gripped with the need to survive forcing him and his fellows to resort to crime as an escape means (Wright, 49). However, this condemns him to fit in the stereotypical labels that are attached to him of being in possession of criminal mentality.

Langston Hughes in many of his poems sought to tackle the theme of identity in America. Living at time slavery and racism was prevalent; he stood as a prominent figure defining himself by the ability to pursue the "black folk" essence when black culture and identity or art was seen as an oxymoron concept (Hughes, 121). Langston Hughes' poem "the theme for English B" depicts a black student who is trying to figure out what is true in his life through an English assignment. Apparently, he is the only black man in the class. There is no surety to him to take the persona of an English student despite his race or to remain true to his culture and heritage.

The structure of the poem "the theme for English B" conveys the struggle for the realization of identity and truth within the context of a fast-paced world where its ideas are quickly changing (Hughes, 128). The poem commences with a quote from the instructor who tutors the class English subject. The instructor claims that any piece that is written from the heart will have a semblance of truth. Nonetheless, in the subsequent stanzas, the speaker expresses doubts concerning his instructor's advice. He begins to list some facts that make him different from the rest of his classmates such as him being the only African American in the class and resides in Harlem.

The confusion of identity is realized in the third stanza. Here the speaker switches to a different assertion as he starts expressing some of the traits he shares with the rest of his classmates such as "I like to sleep, drink, eat, and be in love, to work, learn, read, as well as to understand life." In showing that there are common features he shares with his peers despite them being different in first glance, there is a depiction of a dilemma at realizing who he is and how he can fit in the world (Hughes, 130). In conclusion, the speaker alludes that even though they are different in given features, they are all Americans having common purposes and likes.

Like his colleague writers, James Baldwin recounts on identity fuss that several people find themselves extricated into in America especially racism and lack of identity to black people in the long gone days (Baldwin, 12). Richard Wright and Langston Hughes present the problems so concretely asserting that it was difficult to imagine one would assume American identity if you were a black. In his "discovery on what it means to be an American," enumerates some of the challenges experienced by black Americans (Baldwin, 14). Personally, Baldwin who was a writer expounded on the constant battle and searched on coming to terms with his place in the then racial hot pot society which was dominated by white fellows.

Baldwin tried to escape the vice entrapment by leaving his country and countrymen to search for a self-discovery in Europe where he spent a great deal of time traveling from city to city (Baum, 23). Ironically to him, Europe appeared as a different and separate world because he was able to prosper in n his art of writing "I was able to shed the racial stigma of being a Negro writer." He attests to have realized that the skin color had nothing important when looking for oneself in the Europe continent (Baldwin, 18). His assertions to skin color echo the Langston Hughes character "the student who saw color as nothing important." Consequently, Baldwin's journey in Europe made him felt at ease finding his identity as well as eliminating the "bitterness and shame" that at one point divided him and his American fellows.

Work Cited

Baldwin, James. Nobody knows my name: More notes of a native son. Vol. 6435. Vintage, 1961.

Baum, Bruce. "James Baldwin's 'Discovery of What It Means to Be an American.'." Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity (2009): 263-280.

Hughes, Langston. "Theme for English B." The collected poems of Langston Hughes (1951): 409-10.

Wright, Richard. "Richard Wright, Native Son." Study Guides on General Topics (2010): 271.