Liz's Big Question

Throughout our lives as young students, we are told to be individuals and create our own identities. However, we seem to do this by conforming and creating cliques and ultimately blending together with our friends, classes, high school and entire teen scene all together. Yet when senior year rolls around and the time for college applications in upon us, we actually need to differ ourselves from our peers and do what we can to stand out. We end up looking to the world and ask the big question, "How do we form and shape our identities?"

In literature, from the oldest to the most modern, the identity crisis arises. Oedipus struggles to discover who he truly is after learning he has unfortunately killed his father and slept with his mother while attempting to avoid such fate and realizes his whole life he has been someone else, rather than who he truly is.

Recently I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith and noticed the characters in this comedy/action/romance attempt to fool their spouse with a false identity, although by the end of the story the couple seems to know the truth about their spouse even more than before. By attempting to hide their identities they end up learning who they really are. In some cases, we form our identities with the help of our closest friends.