Advanced Essay #3 - Identity

Finding your personal identity, and your belonging in this world, are composed of different factors. Realizing who you are, and all the things that you feel are not just random. It’s who you are, and there's something very important that makes you who you are. The important aspect of building your identity I want to focus on is how your past experiences shaped who you are today. From everything you have done, and what you have gone through, you have learned from, and sometimes benefited from, has built who you are. I want to go into deep research, and discover why a person is that person based from their past. Or in better terms, “Declan’s Attempt at Psychology.”

In The Great Gatsby, the author did a terrific job with building the identities and personalities of his beloved, and hated characters. Jay Gatsby, the man who has lived it all. He’s one fancy talker, a complete class act, and a very persistent man. But why? It all came from his past. At a young age he was poor, but he had a glimpse at the society of the socially elite and fell in love. He attempted everything he could to reach that society once again. He was taught how to speak like one of them, and he was taught how to act like one of them. This all came from that one life changing experience in his past where he saw the glamorous lifestyle, and it has altered his life in the most grand way. When Scott Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby, he had to think about a few things when designing his characters. Their intentions, motivations, preferences, and their personality. All of those things are formed from what you have experienced in the past, and how you dealt with those situations.

According to Drake Baer from Business Insider, that we are indeed affected by what's happened in our childhood which turns you into the adult you are today. “Tons of research shows that our adult behavior stems from what we experienced as kids.” An article on paradoxical.wordpress.com, a writer speaks on how your past experiences shaped who you are. “Our response to situations, and events in our lives are all shaped by our experiences. Your thought process, our mind set, attitude, aspirations, expectations, and social behaviour are all altered or shaped by our experiences.” This is what Maaher Sayeed said about how are past has changed us. “Most of us feel anxious or experience irrational thoughts from time to time. Often there is a relatively simple background or explanation to why we are acting or thinking in an anxious or irrational way – this may for example be because of certain events in our childhood which make us sensitive in particular situations or it may be because of recent events, or a mixture of the two.” This what David Bonham-Carter had to say about the connection of your past affecting your life in the present. Writers, filmmakers, and other variants of story tellers all have to think about who their characters are, and why they are that way. I have noticed in any form of storytelling, the author/creator will give us either a brief or a long story about their past and why they make decisions like they do now because of the past.