Essay on How Places Shape People’s Identity

Identity is a unique thing that everyone has to own and it can be described through places or cultures or other things that affect our life. From the past until now, humans search for their identity. The universe consists of different places with various landscapes which reflect people’s identity through location or culture and time. Landscapes are the meaning of people’s lives which give symbols for people’s culture, traditions, and valuable things.

When people go to different places, they find how places can shape people’s identity that’s why the writer said: “To identify and understand the life of a group it is necessary to identify its world of objects … in terms of the meanings objects have for the members of the group”. It’s really important to find out the location and the culture that reflect people in different places. Also, stereotyping affects people’s identity greatly by generalizing some knowledge about some nations without any accuracy.

Besides stereotyping, sexism is a good factor in describing people’s identity by showing how people differentiate between men and women in all fields. Places are not only the crucial factor in shaping people’s identity through location or culture and time, but also stereotyping and sexism change identity. Indeed, “the legend of Colton”, “who we were, who we are, and who we hope to be at this place” show the effect of the place in shaping our character through location or culture and time, on the other hand, “rare birds”, and “the danger of a single story” showed some different perspectives about the identity and landscapes.

Place and identity are bonded together like hemical bonds. P ask them selves “who are we? ” and “how can we find our identity? “. This is too difficult tron strong chemical ONUS. I question to answer, but places play an important role in shaping people’s identity. People’s characters are shaped by places including landscapes and location where they grow up. “THE LEGEND OF COLTON” was a great example which showed how places shaped our character through location. Colton was a young guy that was born in Wyoming where the natural landmarks and green mountains.

Riding horses and hunting are the funny things in Wyoming that people used to do. Colton’s experience in Wyoming helped him to build up his character when his brother Preston taught him how to hunt and indeed after a long trip, Colton was able to succeed in hunting. That’s why, Colton used to hunt with his friends from time to time. (Fuller, 2008, p. 9-13) As Wyoming was full of green parts and it had a large number of animals so Bill “Colton’s father” tried to bring Colton up by loving nature and horses and how to make good relationship with his horse.

Step by step, Colton loved COCOA “his horse” and that appeared when it went away, he searched everywhere to find it. (Fuller, 2008, p. 14-18) Another example that showed how the location shaped Colton’s character was his ambition to work like his father in oil rigs. Although oil rigs were really dangerous, but it was the main job and a good source of money in Wyoming. Also, he was brought up with love and respect to his father so he wanted to be like bill. (Fuller, 2008, p. 1-82) Colton’s whole life depended mainly on Wyoming and that was shown in his relation with Wyoming in the way of his death as he died because of oil rigs so his death was also related to Wyoming “his hometown”. (Fuller, 2008, p. 174-182) Places have another strong bond with the culture to reflect people’s identity. The term “culture” is a symbol that carries the meaning of religion, rules, customs and language so people use culture to identify people different environments.

Colton’s character was shaped out by Wyoming culture and that appeared on his great values that he acquired from his family. Colton was a kind person that he forgave his classmates for insulting him (Fuller, 2008, p. 44-47)and he promised his mum to make her proud of him as he said” you will be proud of me, mom, just wait and see”. (Fuller, 2008, p45) He respected the friendship and he was loyal to his friends. His best friend was Jake and they had a strong relationship between each other. When Jake was a child, he and his siblings went to live with their uncle and there they suffered a lot. hen they grew up, their uncle tried to threaten his sister so Jake decided to kill his uncle, but Colton calmed him down and helped him to overcome his fears and forgot his suffering during his childhood. He used “happy dance” (Fuller, 2008, p. 42)phrase to make Jake always happy as his parents taught him to love people and make them happy. (Fuller, 2008, p. 39-43) “The landscapes” for Greider and Garkovich is another example that showed how places shape people’s identity through culture.

Landscapes are symbols that reflect people’s identity through culture and environment as the writers said: “Our understanding of nature and of human relationships with the environment are really cultural expressions used to define who we were, who we are, and who we hope to be at this place and in this space. Landscapes are the reflection of these cultural identities, which are about us, rather than the natural environment”. (Grieder and Garkovich. P. 2). One example which shows how the place can shape people’s identity through culture is the Narmada river in India.

It’s a holy river for Hindu religion and Indians consider it as a landscape that illustrates their culture and define their identity. (Grieder and Garkovich. P. 3) Actors use social culture of different places to show people’s identity through meanings, symbols and how they interact with the nature and environment so the writers show how “understanding symbol systems is essential to understand relationships between human societies, nature, and the environment” and also the connection between people’s identity and unique things in their landscapes through culture. The southern Paiute people think hat rocks have a strong healing power which sometimes give luck and other times cause a great destruction that’s why “Each culture constructs its own world out of the infinite variety of nature”. (Grieder and Garkovich. P. 6). Besides the location and culture, stereotyping is an important factor in shaping people’s identity. It generalizes some characteristics on a group of people through out inaccurate information from news or articles and it’s used to judge them. “The danger of a single story is a good example to show the danger of depending on inaccurate information and using stereotyping to judge other nations.

Chimamanda ngozi is a Nigerian writer gave an example of a single story about a young boy who called “fide” and her mother didn’t tell her any thing about his family except being poor. One day, she went with her family to visit the poor village of fide’s family and there, his mother showed Chimamanda a beautiful basket that they made so she was shocked because she put poverty as a single story for them. She suffered from the danger of a single story when she travelled to study abroad where her roommate asked her how she spoke English very well and she was confused when she knew that English is the official language that was used in Nigeria.

The western literature was a reason for a single story on Africans which showed Africa as a green landscape with illiterate people and overspreading of disasters, wars and diseases like AIDS and that was reflected by John Locke who visited Africa and described Africans as “they are also people without heads, having their mouth and eyes in their breasts”. Another example which showed the stereotyping of American people to Africans was when she gave her professor a paper and he was shocked by her life and writing style as it was not authentically African. Another important factor that can shape people’s identity is sexism.

Sexism means judging people according to their gender. Gender is the biological feature of people’s physical body and it’s used in all societies by different ways of judging, but almost it’s used against females as some societies are male dominated, they consider males more important than females in all fields. Sex reflects who people are and how they think and feel and girls’ identity through their lives. Some societies consider them less important than men and they don’t have the right to work in certain positions even if they are more intelligent than men.

Now, women change the way people think about sexism and they try to work hard to prove that they are equal to men and they can be more successful than them. one example that show how sexism shapes people’s identity is “Rare Birds”. Sarah was an intelligent girl that loved science and nature like her father, but the society was against her because it distinguished between men and women. (“Rare Birds”, p. 60)At this time, people thought that men are more powerful than women.

When her brother “Christopher” and his friends spoke about science, Sarah had her own opinion about that, but her brother thought that it was improper to let women enter a conversation with men with different perspective that opposed his friend’s opinion (“Rare Birds”, p. 63). Also, this society shaped women’s identity through their age and if they married or not as the writer said “she turned twenty-nine. Old, old, old” (“Rare Birds”, p. 61). That’s why Sarah hoped to be like swallows to immigrate from this society and travel to a place where equality between men and women took place. “Rare Birds”, p. 62-65) To sum up, identity is a complicated word that carries different factors that reflect it. “Who people are” is a complex question which is simplified only by knowing different information about people who live in different places and have different ways of thinking so we can know their identity, but we don’t have the write to judge them. Places shape people’s identity through location as “the legend of Colton” showed. Colton loved Wyoming and wanted to work in oil rigs as his father.

Places also reflected people’s identity by culture which includes religion, language, customs and traditions. Colton respected the culture of Wyoming through learning valuable things from his family, hunting and riding horses. The article also showed how Indian people show their identity by respecting their religion and the symbols that the culture gives to reflect people’s identity. In addition, stereotyping and sexism are other factors that reflect identity of people as the ted talk showed how American people stereotype African people and how the society differentiate between women to men as in “Rare birds”.