Growing up: A Journey of One’s Identity

It is inevitable that people age. Every human being, and each being for that matter, grows old. Age is a natural phenomenon that can non be avoided. Part of exploitation up is discovering anes identicalness. As people age, they constantly change a process where they mold themselves into unique individuals.Every experience that a person goes done influences his personality, his character, and his identity. It is done such experiences that people get to weigh who they re bothy are. Triumphs and failures in invigoration are vital for they help gird the character of the person. In a behavior, when an individual goes through an experience, he is formation his character regardless of the outcome of his endeavor.From childhood to adulthood, every experience brings ahead a certain lesson that is inculcated in the individuals being. These lessons are what mend the individual for they directly affect the person that they are.The development of the person and the go of self- un covering as a person grows up are discussed not save in the various fields of science. Literature too has its share of plant life of art that provide an input of how growing up involves the molding and defining of the persons identity. Although not directly discussed, literature highlights how the trip of aging is in parallel with an individuals journey towards defining an identity of his own.In Mary E. Wilkins short tommyrot, Mistaken Charity, the journey of two women through age and time is told. Moreover, it shows how their aging coincides with their realization of who they rightfully are. Harriet and Charlotte are two sisters who never marry. Their life is built on their work and on their manage to survive. However, as age catches up with them, and their aged bodies can no womb-to-tomb stand their own lines of work, they begin to realize that they are not all about their work.When given a chance to move out of their bedraggled suffer and into a better life, they disco ver that it is their experiences living in that house that defines who they are. They are not employ to the life in the Home for it does not feel like home to them. This is what drove Charlotte to say,O Lord, Harrit allow us go home. I cant stay here no ship canal in this world. I dont like their vittles, an I dont like to w spike a cap I want to go home and do different. The currants lead be ripe, Harrit. O Lord, thar was almost a chink, thinking about em. I want well-nigh of em an the Porter apples will be gittin ripe, an we could have some apple-pie. This here aint good. (Wilkins, 148)This shows how no matter how much better another life seems to be, people will always go back to their old way of life for the life they have gotten used to defines who they really are.Another grade that show how growing up means defining who you really are is told in Nathaniel Hawthornes Young Goodman brownness. The story tells of how one experiences that Goodman Brown went through in his you ng days completely changed his outlook on life. His journey through the forest wherein he met the mysterious figure which many chap with the devil may indeed be a dream. However, that experience open(a) his eyes to the reality that people may not be what they get the picture him to be. The good Christians that he thought they were may actually simply be a cover-up of their real selves. Although it could be a dream, the experience was edify for Goodman Brown. More importantly, it was very influential in molding the personality of Brown and his outlook on life.After the experience, Goodman Brown ended up meet a cynic. He was always wondering whether the people around him were who they really were. In fact, Goodman Brown even began to doubt the sincerity of his wife, whom he used to love and trust dearly. After the give tongue to event, he turned into a cynic, wary and pessimistic of his wife and his faithfulness and fidelity.The last paragraph of the story explains the effect th at the experience in the forest had on him. In the said paragraph it was statedA stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the wickedness of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and perfervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future blissfulness or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thrive down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers (Hawthorne, 127)The stories provide evidence of how experiences mold and shape the identity and personality of the individual. Both Goodman Brown and the sisters demonstrated how they are made by their experiences. Thus, it can be said that g rowing up and aging is a process of defining ones self. It is a process of discovery brought about by life experiences where lessons are learned and imbedded in ones way of life.Works CitedHawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman Brown. Literature and caller An gate to fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction. 4th ed. Eds. Pamela Annas, Robert Rossen. Upper Saddle River, N.J. Prentice Hall, 2007, pp 117-127.Wilkins, Mary. Mistaken Charity. Literature and society An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction. 4th ed. Eds. Pamela Annas, Robert Rossen. Upper Saddle River, N.J. Prentice Hall, 2007, pp 140-150.