After reading the book titled "the rules of attraction" I was even more grateful for the life I live today. The "eighties" were a crazy time and this book, this story, is frighteningly accurate in many ways. They live in a bubble waiting for something to happen, while wanting nothing to happen. The characters in the book are always observing, judging, and manipulating each other as they stagnate in a cesspool of decadence and despair. A character named Lauren sums it all up best when she says,” Life is like a typographical error: we’re constantly writing and rewriting things over each other” (85).
“The rules of attraction” is the story of four main characters attending college near the East coast of America during the late 1980’s. They all come from not perfect, but acceptable backgrounds. They also seem to be financially capable but they have no respect for money and find ways to spend it frivolously. This may explain why later in life Lauren is said to marry a senator. All four of them have an identity that has been formulated by their family life as they grew up. However, at this point in their lives they are hell bent on destroying everything they were, stripping away all of their previous identity to formulate one for themselves all on their own. In a strange way all four of them achieve their goal, for they strive for rock bottom, and they all succeed. They tore down the structure of their identities to its very foundation, and it is this period of demolition that the reader witnesses throughout this tragic tale.
Perhaps the characters in the story feel a need to go through this self-destruction period because they think of their identity as not their own. This identity that they attempt to remove is the identity created, molded, and manipulated by their parents, and childhood. To truly become independent perhaps they believe that this previous identity must be stripped from their existence to make room for the identity they develop for adulthood.
We generally reflect on our identity when we find things aren’t going our way. We reflect when we are facing new challenges and want to know how we stack up to the event. If we believe that we do not possess an identity that will enable us to succeed with our desires we may attempt to forge a new identity that will. Perhaps, “identity is best understood not as a fixed entity but as an emotionally charged discursive description of ourselves that is subject to change” (Barker 216).
Identity and self are portions that make up who we are. I disagree that “identity exists as a universal and timeless core of the self that we all possess” (Barker 217). I disagree with this because it uses the word “identity” as singular, and I would be much more convinced if it were plural. I believe that the self is the core of who we are, and the identity is simply a mask we put on to achieve our intensions. The core of the self within all of us is the compilation of a lifetime of experiences. The self is the home of our arsenal of identities formulated to be utilized at any moment to get us over the many of life’s hurdles. Each one of these “identity masks” is a true facet of the core of one’s self. We are different things to different people and therefore our identity much shift and flow with every change of setting, environment, or circumstance. For my wife my identity is husband, for my child I am the father, in class I am the student. My identity is always shifting for I take on different roles for different people. An identity is one of many that collect around the self, wraps around the core, which encapsulates the soul.
Works Cited
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 3rd ed. Sage Publications Ltd. Los Angeles. 2008. Print.
Ellis, Brett E. The Rules of Attraction. Vintage Contemporaries. New York, 1998. Print.
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