History is defined as a series of past events that are connected to someone or something, including their triumphs and failures. Thus it is natural for the history of mankind to repeat itself, influencing the way the next generation learns on how to live and act to their surroundings. It challenges people on a daily basis to either deny or accept society’s misconceptions of them, Society in other words, helps or hinders the creation of that person's identity.

For the past few weeks, my classmates and I have been reading and analyzing one Richard Wright's popular works of literature, Native Son. The novel is compromised into three books - “Fear,” “Flight,” and “Fate” - whose contents are established by Bigger Thomas’s development as a black man who's constricted by his environment’s white conformity. To quickly summarize, Bigger Thomas a twenty year old black male living in the community of Chicago during the 1930's suffers greatly from the racism and oppression forced upon him. As a result, his personality developed into one of irrationality, predatory and anxiousness. For the lack of a better term, he's caged. The white community during the time saw Bigger's caged self as a joke, a joy to their daily lives as they watched him cry. They viewed his crying as music to their ears, loving the way the minorities (blacks) during the time period suffer. Heartless I know. 

According to Orville Wright, "If birds can glide for long periods of time then . . . why can't I?" In the novel, I remember a scene clearly between Bigger and Gus. In book one "Fear," Bigger and Gus were playing "white" demonstrating how trapped their people were and how much comparative freedom white people have. After they were finished, they noticed a couple of feet away a pigeon landing on a cable car truck before quickly flying away after. I don't remember the rest clearly, but I do know that Bigger says something along the lines of " . . I want to be able to do that someday." Note to self: When anyone in literature (or in real life) mentions that they'd like to be a bird, there's an approximately 99.9% chance that they're wishing for a little bit or lot of freedom. The pigeon in the novel symbolized freedom, the ability in which he fails to have because he was unable to go to aviation school. In regards to Native Son, American culture during the 1930's was full of judgments (which still continue to date but not as harshly) towards those not of white ethnic backgrounds. This is a result of history, the events in the past about slavery, racism, and prejudices which influenced modern day thinking. With this in mind, those who are victimized are shaped by the culture to either accept the misconceptions of their "superiors" or oppose much like Bigger Thomas. 

From the very beginning, the point of this blog point was to answer, how does culture help or hinder the creation of someone's identity? The answer is this: 

To see whether a person’s identity is shaped by his/her culture, we need to understand what culture consists of and what the characteristics of a personal identity are. Since we are social beings, our knowledge, beliefs and behavior are acquired from the social group we live in. We have inherited our ancestors’ discoveries, beliefs and customs which have been gathered and altered generation after generation and to which we will add up new elements for the generations to come. Thus, culture has a major role in shaping our identity; however, does that bring us to the conclusion that all individuals living in the same culture end up having the same identities? Such an assumption is quite traumatic, for it reduces us to robots and denies the fact that a person is a “being” that has self awareness, is of a dynamic nature and is in interaction with its community. Not only are we part of our society, but we are also living beings that exist by themselves, through introspection.