Identity and the Novel

Senior English. Fri, Aug 17th, 2012 at 10:04 pm

Themes: The Stranger, Things Fall Apart

Yesterday we read W.B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming” in all its apocalyptic glory. If you didn’t get chills the first reading ((“vexed to nightmare”?! That’ll keep me up…)), give it another go.

Today we discussed what it means to represent an individual, a personality, in literature. This has become our guiding question:

How is identity represented in literature?

An odd question and one worth unpacking a bit before we attempt an answer. In moving toward a better understanding of identity, we made connections between our representation of ourselves to others—or any autobiographical act—and the relationship between an author and his creation.

We’ll read a number of works (Oedipus Rex, The Stranger, Things Fall Apart, others likely) and call on previous readings (Hamlet, especially) to better answer this question. Ensure that you are reading and journaling—you’ll have time for group discussions on Monday.

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