Finding One’s Own Identity
Introduction
The topic of this paper is how a person finds his or her story in the midst of a whole new world. As free human beings, we often find ourselves in places which surprise, shock, amuse and enlighten us with their unfamiliarity. It is not very comfortable for every one of us to accept the fact that what we perceive is seldom real, or something that we can relate to when we experience it firsthand. The sources that have been used for the construction of this paper include various articles, essays and books which pertain to the topic. My primary, and most important, source is the essay by Eula Biss, by the name of “Goodbye to All That” from “Notes from No Man’s Land”. My secondary sources include a short story by the name of “The Night of Oranges” by author Flavius Stan which is also a narrative of a young man trying to make his own story in a seemingly myriad place in Romania. My third source is a book by the name of “The Hungry Tide” written by the well acclaimed author Amitabh Ghosh. All these sources are relevant for my topic as they offer some relevant, or rather indispensable, insight and knowledge about how people learn to adapt themselves to unfamiliarity of a place, situation or circumstance.
Biss, Eula. Goodbye to All That: Notes from No Man’s Land
Saint Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 2009. Print
Keywords: New York, life, story
Eula Biss, in her essay “Goodbye to All That” reminisces about her days in New York. She opines that in the three years that she spent trying to acclimatize with the much-hyped environment and lifestyle of New York, she only got closer to the truth which many people often fail to realize in a lifetime, and that is no place can give us a story unless we can find one which we can call our own. The author delves upon the various misconceptions that people nurture in their minds when they think about New York. Biss shows us a New York which is neither fancy nor flamboyant, but a mundane depiction of the grueling life people live out there. She opines that when she had come to New York for the first time, she was least affected by the glitter and glamour as it took her little time to realize that they were just a small part of an otherwise “commonplace” town. She was shocked by the audacity of children as they passed lewd comments and intrigued by the silent empathy shown to her by a seemingly dangerous man. She spent her years trying out different jobs and making ends meet. She also spent a great deal of her time watching people and contemplating on the differences that she felt. In the essay, Biss also tells her reader that when she came to New York, she had only owned a bed and when she left, she did not even posses that one worldly commodity. The author, by sharing her experiences in the most realistic way possible, makes it quite clear to us that life is not to be accepted or thwarted based on the predictability of events, as that is something which does not really exist. The detailed description of her struggles to be a part of the city and feel “normal” tells us that no place would be kind to us unless we find our own way out. She also lets her readers know that she often decided to leave the city, which she eventually did, but not before she realizes the worthiness, or unworthiness, of the place. According to Biss, New York is just another place to live. The essay “Goodbye to All That” is instrumental in providing a sense of credibility and realism to my topic as it shows us exactly how a person can either decide to accept or deny the nuances of time, place and circumstances. Biss, with her personal experiences, teaches us that no matter how good, or bad, a place looks like from the perspective of an outsider, one can truly determine the full potential of the place by no other means than by living in it.
Ghosh, Amitabh. The Hungry Tide
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Print.
Keywords: dolphins, tide country
In his novel “The Hungry Tide”, the author, Amitabh Ghosh, weaves yet another tale displaying supreme penmanship and insight as he brings together the lives of three different people amidst the dangerous, and intriguing, backdrop of the Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal. The tide-country, as it is better known, owing to the unpredictability of the floods that can arise at any time or day or night, is known to be the best place for marveling at the wrath of nature. In the story, a marine biologist, Piyali Roy, finds herself surrounded by intriguing beauty and ferocity of nature as she embarks on her journey to spot, and study, an extremely rare species of dolphins. The young lady, who has spent all her life in the West, grapples in the milieu of the primitive people who throng the island as she finds her way out of her dangerous adventures. She learns how to communicate with a local fisherman even when she cannot understand his language. She learns to respect the values which the village folks nurture so vehemently in their hearts and she basks in the glory of their tell-tales. She experiences the unexpected, the unforeseen and the unfathomable during her prolonged stay at the Sunderbans. It is through these rich and unforgettable experiences that she realizes that the life she was so familiar with is just another story for a person living under opposite circumstances. She realizes the worthiness of differences in people and their ideologies and she welcomes all the change often with a welcoming gesture. Her curious ventures not only leads her to seek and find her answers in the most unexpected places, but she also ends up finding love, companionship, brotherhood and humanity in places where she least expected to find them. This book has been taken as a reference for this paper solely because of the rich experiences that the author highlights in order to depict the adaptability of humans in every circumstance. This source is quite an apt one for my topic as it would not only help us ascertain the fact that life is not a bed of roses, but a garden adorned with many colors, and often blemished by the fallen and rotten leaves of time. “The Hungry Tide” shows us how to expect the unexpected and how to feel blessed about the fact that as human beings, we have the capability to take everything that comes our way. Not many species in the world can attain that.
Stan, Flavius. The Night of Oranges
New York Times
Keywords: oranges, Romania
The short story, “The Night of Oranges” first appeared on the New York Times and was much acclaimed for the style of narrative and the circumstances depicted by the author, who was barely 18 years old when he wrote it. Flavius Stan has since been known as an author of exceptional talent and skill in portraying the myriad realities of life in a positive and heartwarming manner. In this story, the author depicts the joy and gaiety which people manage to find even in the toughest of situations. The story is based in Romania and the narrator tells us about the events that occurred during Christmas Eve. Being young man of 18 years, the author had decided to spend his meager allowances on a movie to treat himself on Christmas Eve. However, it comes to his notice that oranges were being sold that very night. Flavius Stan displays an act of pure love and compassion towards his young brother and his family by spending the money kept for the movies on a bag of oranges with an intention to delight them with an unexpected gift. The way the story has been written speaks a lot about the misery that surrounded the people of Romania in that particular period of time. As the author reflects, there were queues for everything, even for things that we would term as basic necessities like bread and water. Stan spends six hours in a queue and finally his selfless efforts are rewarded with a bag full of the much coveted Christmas delicacy, oranges! The joy in his brother’s eyes and the look of pride on his parent’s face makes Stan believe that one goes about finding happiness in all possible places only to come back home and find it right there. This story is an important source for this paper as it depicts in the most conversational and casual manner the intricacies of life about which many scholars have spent a lifetime to figure out. We are all aware of how valuable our life is, but we seldom realize that we need to appreciate what we have instead of cribbing about what we do not have. We can all create our own story, find our own plots and characters, define our own heroism or cowardice and at the end of the day, no matter how good or bad the story is, it will at least be our own. It would be based less on our inhibitions and more on our experiences and capabilities. All we need to do is accept the fact that there is nothing waiting for us in the vast abyss of life unless we go looking for it. We may not find what we are looking for, but we will certainly find things that would amaze, amuse, surprise and shock us with their unfamiliarity. And this is how we can embark on the journey of enlightenment.
