The Lives Of Others By Alekskandar Hermon

Within the essay ‘The Lives of Others’, author Alekskandar Hermon ends the essay with a rhetorical question. Hermon asks “What am I?”, which is a fitting question for an essay with the reoccurring theme of identity and self definition. Hermon continues further, accompanying the question with an answer of his own explanation. Hermon wrote, “I am complicated…I am nothing if not an entanglement of unanswerable questions, a cluster of others. I’d like to say it might be too early to tell” (24).Within this passage, the meaning behind Hermon’s answer could be in relation to the essay’s general theme. By stating that he is complicated, he could be implying that he is not easily definable by society’s structured stereotypes. Often times labels within
Consistently, we stereotype by race or ethnicity, and label by gender or sexuality. Societal conducts of placing people in ‘boxes’ is damaging, because people are viewed more with predetermined assumptions, and less as individuals. Within this passage, Hermon indicates that ‘what’ he is is a complex individual, with a freethinking mind, and an unconstrained personality. These addressed ideas are in relation to modern day social and political issues, because concepts of both stereotypes and surmises are present and practiced on a societal scale. In the text, Hermon describes a story he once read in a Canadian newspaper. Hermon included this story in his essay to describe an emigrated man’s experience with social expectations and ethnic identity. The man, a professor, was confronted and asked to explain ‘what’ he was. The answer expected was definition as to what ethnic group he belonged to; to which he replied stating his profession. Hermon wrote “the professor’s ethnicity was the only relevant piece of information about him.” (22) In context of the story, I feel as though the idea behind the story of that man is heavily related to Hermon’s personal ideas of identity and self definition. In today’s social and political fronts, assumptions are commonly made, and I feel as though that society’s perception often does not take into account the factors of an
The idea behind his message is similar to how I approach my own identity. As a teenager, I am young, with many years and plenty of life left ahead of me. I, as an individual, am subject to change. Though I fit the criteria under standard sectors of identity, female, heterosexual, Christian, white, ect., my individuality is not exclusive or limited to those aspects of myself. Throughout my lifetime, different variations of me will exist. Attributes I once held solid within my identity construction will develop, change, and evolve. I, as a sole person, will probably grow into different people throughout my lifetime. Under the basis that I am susceptible to change, my identity is too fluid to categorize, too untrammeled to stereotype, and too progressive to label. My identity consists of individualistic thinking that is too complicated to define in society’s terms. That is what I interpreted as Hermon’s meaning behind the