Meade 1 Katy Meade Professor Joy HON 201 20 November 2014 Identity and the True Self According to the Online Merriam Webster Dictionary, identity is formed from “the qualities, beliefs, etc. that make a particular person or group different from others”. This definition does not seem complete however, as it lacks the idea of the impact of someone’s view of themselves. Accomplishments, relationships, happiness, and the desire for all of these things are factors that someone considers while determining how one thinks of themselves. However, there is a high variability in someone’s happiness at different points in time. Identity cannot be concrete then if someone has an evolving view of themselves as situations change. The erraticism of happiness, which Emma Bovary, Young Werther, and Norman Bates all experience from their involvements with love, subsequently causes an alteration in their identity from each new development. The first phase to consider is someone’s identity when their desires for someone are satisfied. In Emma Bovary’s case, she creates new desires once others have been achieved, as she feels that nothing is ever entirely complete in her happiness. “She kept promising herself that on her next trip, she would be profoundly happy; then she would admit that she had not felt anything extraordinary” (Flaubert 250). With this mindset, Emma’s identity is one that she sees for herself in the future.She places herself in a fantasy where she is completely, incandescently in love with her lover forever with no other matters to care about. In reality then, Emma’s
