Fall Fallowturn Moon
Review in the Strib this morning of a book of essays focused on identity. What makes you you? Just finished three weeks on the Odyssey and the Greeks were pretty clear about it: name, lineage, home, story. So, Odysseus was of Laertes line, an Ithacan by birth and the Iliad in part and the Odyssey almost completely tells his story. Know the content of the Odyssey combined with some of the Iliad and you will know who Odysseus is.
This image represents one way of thinking about it. What would you have on your list? Or, would it be an object, a painting, or a belief system. What?
That would not hold for us, would it. I’m Charlie, of the line of Curtis Ellis, originally of Oklahoma, later Indiana and for most of my life Minnesota. What would constitute my story, I wonder? That is, what parts of my life, strung together in a narrative could meaningful describe my life?
Of course, those are all aspects of my life, but are they constitutive of my identity? A very interesting question to me, especially when you layer it within the broader question of American identity. What is it?
