Multiple Identities in "Steppenwolf"
=================================
Wolran Kim
March 2014
Hermann Hesse’s psychoanalytical novel, Steppenwolf, shows a spiritual journey through the notions of multiple identities, the existence of a world beyond time, and the complex nature of laughter. This book exposes human’s meanness through a man who has the identity of Steppenwolf, and criticizes that people who are accustomed with a force of habit should face up to their internal identities.
The protagonist Harry Haller is a complicated character with all conflicts inside him from brutishness to sacredness. Harry’s encounter with the “wall between the church and the hospital (31-33)” might be read as a compacted scene of the whole book considering the theses, multiple identities, the existence of a world beyond time, and the complex nature of laughter. This work will show how this scene suggests to the theses of Steppenwolf through the analysis of unusual details, hidden meanings, visual symbols, allusions, and overall relationships of the individual parts to the whole.
The scene alludes to Harry’s inner world and troubles metaphorically and indirectly sentence by sentence, such as a poem. Harry “went along the wet street through one of the quietest and oldest quarters of the town” (31). Here, “the quietest and oldest” seems to have a hidden meaning of Harry’s self description, because he is an outsider, rather than an insider, and he is an old man who is close to death considering the average 1920’s life span.
The depictions about the ‘wetness’ such as “along the wet street,” “so deep in mud and water,” “landing deep into the mud,” “the mud and puddles,” and “I stood waiting in the mud,” give allusions of a troubled mind, bad luck, anxiety, grief, melancholy, and pensiveness. The wetness may be analyzed that something, actually the water, never flows pleasantly and creates an unpleasant environment by staying. The nature of water is flowing. The water makes messes with the dirt if it stays on the road that people walk or drive through. This stickiness and messy atmosphere suggests Harry’s internal state built of uncertainty and insecurity.
The terms ‘church’ and ‘hospital’ also have hidden meanings and visual symbols. “Old and serene, it stood between a little church and an old hospital and often during the day I let my eyes rest on its rough surface” (31). The church and the hospital have meaningful relations. The church is a place of healing souls, and the hospital is a place of healing physical illnesses. Here, healing is the common feature, and the soul and the flesh are the contrast points. The landlady’s nephew describes Harry’s physical condition like this in the preface, “Late, I found out that his health was poor and that walking tired him” (5).
He calls Harry “Genius of suffering” (10). Harry’s physical disorders can be referred to the hospital, and his psychiatric suffering can be referred to the church. “[A]nd in so far as he let loose upon himself every barbed criticism, every anger and hate he could command, he was, in spite of all, a real Christian and a real martyr” (11). Harry, who has a physical sickness and self-hatred, abhors not the others or the world, but himself. The man with sufferings of body and soul dreams of suicide on his fiftieth birthday. Harry has “strangeness” and “extraordinary and frightful loneliness” (10). So this scene where Harry sits on the old stone wall between the church and the hospital is a suggestive setting, relating to the multiple identities and the existence of a world beyond time.
Another implication in this scene is the exposure to Harry’s likes and dislikes. Blinking electric signs may represent modern popular culture, which Harry hates. Through the whole novel, Harry’s hatred toward the modern popular culture is expressed as messy, dirty, wet, mud, noisy puddles, shouting, colorful, new, bright, vanishing, and illegible. Harry’s uncanny feeling of the electric sign seems like a supernatural and fantastic psychological projection, because readers cannot tell whether it is Harry’s imagination or reality. “[T]he town where from every square foot some lawyer, or quack, or doctor, or barber, or chiropodist shouted his name at you” (31). These occupations mean a sense of ordinary people, and these people shout for marketing or advertisement. This expression implies a fevered air of modern capitalism. Also, these businesses show the various physical and social troubles of people.
For music or art, “shouted” may refer to pop culture, such as Pablo’s, in contrast to Harry’s favorite classic culture, such as Mozart’s and Goethe’s. Thus, the scene, “the quietest and oldest” in the darkness, represents Harry’s beloved classical and intellectual culture described as serene, quiet, peaceful, and pretty. However, here is a reversal about Harry’s likes and dislikes; Harry says that a person who made an electric sign was a Steppenwolf.
The reason that Harry identifies himself with the sign maker as a Steppenwolf is because the sign is instant, hard to read, irregular, faint, abrupt, and vague. These ambiguous expressions may be applied to Harry’s psychiatric status. This empathy becomes a way out from the wall surrounding Harry in the same way as the wall between the church and the hospital. Thus, this empathy becomes a ‘door’ for an exit into the modern popular culture by Harry identifying the sign maker as a Steppenwolf, as himself.
The ghostly electric sign, “For Madmen Only” (32) also is the subtitle of the part, “Harry Haller’s Records.” Harry is a madmen and he calls himself “the homeless Steppenwolf, the solitary, the hater of life’s petty convention” (28). He thinks he is living the life of “soul-destroying, evil days of inward vacancy and despair” (26). Harry’s madness signifies a gifted intellectual’s sufferings and conflicts and not being able to live an ordinary life. The scene by “the wall between the church and the hospital” also portrays Harry’s identity of mental conflicts between pain and pleasure.
This conflict shows Harry’s multiple identities; Harry’s pain could be referred to his man-half, and his pleasure could be associated with his wolf-half. However, his pleasure is easily shifted to hatred, and he escapes to the way of suffering. He says he “would rather feel the very devil burn” (27); as the expression of Harry’s landlady’s nephew in the preface, Harry must be a “genius of suffering”; “and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself with positive genius a boundless and frightful capacity for pain. I saw at the same time that the root of his pessimism was not world-contempt but self-contempt” (10). Harry’s pessimistic worldview begins from negative feelings about himself, not the outside world or others.
In Harry’s multiple identities, this quotation shows his optimistic ray of hope; “longing too for that doorway to an enchanted theater, which was for madmen only” (33). This hope may be connected to “a fragment of my former thoughts came suddenly to my mind,” because there is “the similarity to the track of shining gold which suddenly vanishes and cannot be found.” Harry seems as though he expects in his last hope to the electric sign, “For Madmen Only!” which repeats appearing and disappearing like a goblin’s light. His wolf-half has to roam alone in the wilderness alienated from ordinary people and normal society. “They were for [everybody], for those normal persons whom I saw crowding every entrance.” Harry is an outsider completely isolated from reality.
The term, “Madmen,” hooks superiority, distinct from ordinary people. “Madmen” is not the negative meaning of crazy, but sounds like a special recognition. On that account, Harry thinks that the Magic Theater may have a solution for him. “In spite of that my sadness was a little lightened. I had had a greeting from another world, and a few dancing, colored letters had played upon my soul and sounded it secret strings” (33). This optimistic and fantastic ending of the scene gives the same feeling as Harry’s ending narrations of the novel; “One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too” (218).
In these last comments, Harry creates an optimistic ending as a person who dreams of suicide in heavy philosophical sufferings and despair. His entire heavy mind becomes light; life is the same as a chess game and the pain can be replaced by laughter. Harry sees Pablo and Mozart with the same angle of view. Pablo and Mozart each represent popular culture and classical culture, and new age and old age as the existence of a world beyond time. Harry’s changed view shows the harmony of modern and classic, and reality and fantastic art. The “secret strings” is the union of heavy conflict and light laughter, and this harmony alludes to Harry’s recognition of his multiple identities, not just the two, man-half and wolf-half.
Harry’s fantastic discourses show his psychiatric frame of mind. “This time, too, the wall was peaceful and serene and yet something was altered in it. I was amazed to see a small and pretty doorway with a Gothic arch in the middle of the wall, for I could not make up my mind whether this doorway had always been there or whether it had just been made” (31). “This time” is the beginning of his dreaming logic, and “this doorway” is the origin of his psychic journey that becomes Harry’s seeking of his identities and fantastic experience to the Magic Theater.
Does the door just suddenly appear in front of him or was it always there? The question about the existence of the door could be connected to a psychological and philosophical awareness. People often see what they want to see. People see what they know, and people know as much as they see. This general notion may be related to the attachment between Harry and the door. Harry says, “Probably I had seen it a hundred times and simply not noticed it” (31). Harry accepts his possibility of illusion or misjudgment. Also, he says a fresh color of door captivates his eyes first, not by his intention. Harry still leaves full of suggestions. The door reminds me of Alice’s Wonderland.
The attachment between Harry and the door hints to Harry’s change of mind; he sees something he never saw before even though it was there. Steppenwolf actually talks about Harry’s mental destitution and despair, but eventually suggests a transition of his view. “[Y]et something was altered in it,” this mention shows Harry’s psychiatric alteration; the existence of the door was not important to Harry before, but now this door becomes the significant beginning of Harry’s psychic journey that shows his multiple identities visually. As soon as he sees this door, he starts to experience new culture which he has despised, such as dance, popular music, and sexual love through Hermine, Pablo, and Maria.
Harry and modern popular culture encounter each other by these three people. Thus, the door becomes a passageway to Harry where he recognizes his multiple identities through the encounter with the unfamiliar popular culture. Additionally, the door is an exit to the reality to Harry who is standing between the old stone wall (his old, classical, and intellectual culture) and the new electric sign (the future, modern popular culture). Harry’s inner conflict may begin from the lack of the present.
This door is also associated with the door in the Magic Theater. Pablo introduces the Magic Theater as the “school of humor,” and Harry laughs, fully and with a feeling of wonderful release. Harry, who is half man and half wolf, relieves his mental strain by taking drugs, dancing, and listening to Jazz music. Consolidation of immortal people such as Mozart and Goethe of Harry’s dream at the Black Eagle encourages Harry to laugh at his own personality and life. Laughter is one way of healing and a newborn life. The Magic Theater shows him how liberal he is and all possibilities of his life.
The Magic Theater’s doors are opened continuously in front of Harry, and show his multiple identities visually in unusual scenes.
The first door in the Magic Theater says, “JOLLY HUNTING/ GREAT HUNT IN AUTOMOBILES” (180). Harry experiences a pleasure for murder despite being a pacifist, by shooting passing cars beyond this door. On the second door, “GUIDANCE IN THE BUILDING UP OF THE PERSONALITY. SUCCESS GUARANTEED” (191) was written. A man who looks like Pablo asks Harry to put the pieces of his personality on a chessboard. Pablo shows Harry how to infinitely reconfigure them, and Harry puts these wonderful pieces in his pocket. The third door says, “MARVELOUS TAMING OF THE STEPPENWOLF” (194), and Harry sees a man and the hungry wolf. Through the fourth door, Harry enters, “ALL GIRLS ARE YOURS” (197), and he gets to enjoy all the women he has ever wanted in his life. Finally, Harry stands in front of the final door marked, “HOW ONE KILLS FOR LOVE” (203).
These words remind him of Hermine’s request about a final command to kill her. When he returns to this final door, he thrusts the knife under Hermine’s left breast, because she was on the floor naked with Pablo. Harry kills Hermine because of jealousy on the fantastic stage, and Harry’s action may be read as a symbol of his suicide, because Hermine is a reflection of some part of Harry through the novel. It means that Harry kills the part of his ego who wants to commit suicide.
Harry’s experience in the Magic Theater seems to be visual screens of his emotional and psychic reality. The five doors question the boundary between life and theatrical art, and between reality and fantasy. Through this strange performance, Harry sees his inner conflict between his man-half and wolf-half in the realm of art or magic. Each of the five doors in the Magic Theater may suggest different meanings of life and different views of life to Harry. A door serves as connecting the two different spaces. The space is disconnected if the door is closed, and the space has a mutual understanding if the door is opened.
All buildings and houses have doors, and people go in and out only through the doors. A wall is opened by a door, and the wall is a metaphor for a barrier and the door is a metaphor for communication. The wall needs a door to be connected. The wall between the church and the hospital has a door and this door is seen by Harry. This suggests that Harry’s spiritual wall has a door, and he realizes that he can open this door into the real world. Actually, Harry walks into the ordinary people’s world that he used to hate through this door. He encounters Hermine, Pablo, and Maria, and starts to see the new world that he had never taken seriously before.
Eventually, the door between the church and the hospital are linked to the five doors in the Magic Theater. The Magic Theater shows Harry’s multiple identities, thus Harry Haller’s encounter with the “wall between the church and the hospital” is worth investigating as the case of Steppenwolf’s theme, the multiple identities, the existence of a world beyond time, and the complex nature of laughter. Harry may be seen as the figure of the 21st century, modern people who lives as outsiders. Harry expects that one day he would learn how to laugh and be a better gamer of life through realizing his multiple identities.
=================================
Wolran Kim
March 2014
Hermann Hesse’s psychoanalytical novel, Steppenwolf, shows a spiritual journey through the notions of multiple identities, the existence of a world beyond time, and the complex nature of laughter. This book exposes human’s meanness through a man who has the identity of Steppenwolf, and criticizes that people who are accustomed with a force of habit should face up to their internal identities.
The protagonist Harry Haller is a complicated character with all conflicts inside him from brutishness to sacredness. Harry’s encounter with the “wall between the church and the hospital (31-33)” might be read as a compacted scene of the whole book considering the theses, multiple identities, the existence of a world beyond time, and the complex nature of laughter. This work will show how this scene suggests to the theses of Steppenwolf through the analysis of unusual details, hidden meanings, visual symbols, allusions, and overall relationships of the individual parts to the whole.
The scene alludes to Harry’s inner world and troubles metaphorically and indirectly sentence by sentence, such as a poem. Harry “went along the wet street through one of the quietest and oldest quarters of the town” (31). Here, “the quietest and oldest” seems to have a hidden meaning of Harry’s self description, because he is an outsider, rather than an insider, and he is an old man who is close to death considering the average 1920’s life span.
The depictions about the ‘wetness’ such as “along the wet street,” “so deep in mud and water,” “landing deep into the mud,” “the mud and puddles,” and “I stood waiting in the mud,” give allusions of a troubled mind, bad luck, anxiety, grief, melancholy, and pensiveness. The wetness may be analyzed that something, actually the water, never flows pleasantly and creates an unpleasant environment by staying. The nature of water is flowing. The water makes messes with the dirt if it stays on the road that people walk or drive through. This stickiness and messy atmosphere suggests Harry’s internal state built of uncertainty and insecurity.
The terms ‘church’ and ‘hospital’ also have hidden meanings and visual symbols. “Old and serene, it stood between a little church and an old hospital and often during the day I let my eyes rest on its rough surface” (31). The church and the hospital have meaningful relations. The church is a place of healing souls, and the hospital is a place of healing physical illnesses. Here, healing is the common feature, and the soul and the flesh are the contrast points. The landlady’s nephew describes Harry’s physical condition like this in the preface, “Late, I found out that his health was poor and that walking tired him” (5).
He calls Harry “Genius of suffering” (10). Harry’s physical disorders can be referred to the hospital, and his psychiatric suffering can be referred to the church. “[A]nd in so far as he let loose upon himself every barbed criticism, every anger and hate he could command, he was, in spite of all, a real Christian and a real martyr” (11). Harry, who has a physical sickness and self-hatred, abhors not the others or the world, but himself. The man with sufferings of body and soul dreams of suicide on his fiftieth birthday. Harry has “strangeness” and “extraordinary and frightful loneliness” (10). So this scene where Harry sits on the old stone wall between the church and the hospital is a suggestive setting, relating to the multiple identities and the existence of a world beyond time.
Another implication in this scene is the exposure to Harry’s likes and dislikes. Blinking electric signs may represent modern popular culture, which Harry hates. Through the whole novel, Harry’s hatred toward the modern popular culture is expressed as messy, dirty, wet, mud, noisy puddles, shouting, colorful, new, bright, vanishing, and illegible. Harry’s uncanny feeling of the electric sign seems like a supernatural and fantastic psychological projection, because readers cannot tell whether it is Harry’s imagination or reality. “[T]he town where from every square foot some lawyer, or quack, or doctor, or barber, or chiropodist shouted his name at you” (31). These occupations mean a sense of ordinary people, and these people shout for marketing or advertisement. This expression implies a fevered air of modern capitalism. Also, these businesses show the various physical and social troubles of people.
For music or art, “shouted” may refer to pop culture, such as Pablo’s, in contrast to Harry’s favorite classic culture, such as Mozart’s and Goethe’s. Thus, the scene, “the quietest and oldest” in the darkness, represents Harry’s beloved classical and intellectual culture described as serene, quiet, peaceful, and pretty. However, here is a reversal about Harry’s likes and dislikes; Harry says that a person who made an electric sign was a Steppenwolf.
The reason that Harry identifies himself with the sign maker as a Steppenwolf is because the sign is instant, hard to read, irregular, faint, abrupt, and vague. These ambiguous expressions may be applied to Harry’s psychiatric status. This empathy becomes a way out from the wall surrounding Harry in the same way as the wall between the church and the hospital. Thus, this empathy becomes a ‘door’ for an exit into the modern popular culture by Harry identifying the sign maker as a Steppenwolf, as himself.
The ghostly electric sign, “For Madmen Only” (32) also is the subtitle of the part, “Harry Haller’s Records.” Harry is a madmen and he calls himself “the homeless Steppenwolf, the solitary, the hater of life’s petty convention” (28). He thinks he is living the life of “soul-destroying, evil days of inward vacancy and despair” (26). Harry’s madness signifies a gifted intellectual’s sufferings and conflicts and not being able to live an ordinary life. The scene by “the wall between the church and the hospital” also portrays Harry’s identity of mental conflicts between pain and pleasure.
This conflict shows Harry’s multiple identities; Harry’s pain could be referred to his man-half, and his pleasure could be associated with his wolf-half. However, his pleasure is easily shifted to hatred, and he escapes to the way of suffering. He says he “would rather feel the very devil burn” (27); as the expression of Harry’s landlady’s nephew in the preface, Harry must be a “genius of suffering”; “and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself with positive genius a boundless and frightful capacity for pain. I saw at the same time that the root of his pessimism was not world-contempt but self-contempt” (10). Harry’s pessimistic worldview begins from negative feelings about himself, not the outside world or others.
In Harry’s multiple identities, this quotation shows his optimistic ray of hope; “longing too for that doorway to an enchanted theater, which was for madmen only” (33). This hope may be connected to “a fragment of my former thoughts came suddenly to my mind,” because there is “the similarity to the track of shining gold which suddenly vanishes and cannot be found.” Harry seems as though he expects in his last hope to the electric sign, “For Madmen Only!” which repeats appearing and disappearing like a goblin’s light. His wolf-half has to roam alone in the wilderness alienated from ordinary people and normal society. “They were for [everybody], for those normal persons whom I saw crowding every entrance.” Harry is an outsider completely isolated from reality.
The term, “Madmen,” hooks superiority, distinct from ordinary people. “Madmen” is not the negative meaning of crazy, but sounds like a special recognition. On that account, Harry thinks that the Magic Theater may have a solution for him. “In spite of that my sadness was a little lightened. I had had a greeting from another world, and a few dancing, colored letters had played upon my soul and sounded it secret strings” (33). This optimistic and fantastic ending of the scene gives the same feeling as Harry’s ending narrations of the novel; “One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too” (218).
In these last comments, Harry creates an optimistic ending as a person who dreams of suicide in heavy philosophical sufferings and despair. His entire heavy mind becomes light; life is the same as a chess game and the pain can be replaced by laughter. Harry sees Pablo and Mozart with the same angle of view. Pablo and Mozart each represent popular culture and classical culture, and new age and old age as the existence of a world beyond time. Harry’s changed view shows the harmony of modern and classic, and reality and fantastic art. The “secret strings” is the union of heavy conflict and light laughter, and this harmony alludes to Harry’s recognition of his multiple identities, not just the two, man-half and wolf-half.
Harry’s fantastic discourses show his psychiatric frame of mind. “This time, too, the wall was peaceful and serene and yet something was altered in it. I was amazed to see a small and pretty doorway with a Gothic arch in the middle of the wall, for I could not make up my mind whether this doorway had always been there or whether it had just been made” (31). “This time” is the beginning of his dreaming logic, and “this doorway” is the origin of his psychic journey that becomes Harry’s seeking of his identities and fantastic experience to the Magic Theater.
Does the door just suddenly appear in front of him or was it always there? The question about the existence of the door could be connected to a psychological and philosophical awareness. People often see what they want to see. People see what they know, and people know as much as they see. This general notion may be related to the attachment between Harry and the door. Harry says, “Probably I had seen it a hundred times and simply not noticed it” (31). Harry accepts his possibility of illusion or misjudgment. Also, he says a fresh color of door captivates his eyes first, not by his intention. Harry still leaves full of suggestions. The door reminds me of Alice’s Wonderland.
The attachment between Harry and the door hints to Harry’s change of mind; he sees something he never saw before even though it was there. Steppenwolf actually talks about Harry’s mental destitution and despair, but eventually suggests a transition of his view. “[Y]et something was altered in it,” this mention shows Harry’s psychiatric alteration; the existence of the door was not important to Harry before, but now this door becomes the significant beginning of Harry’s psychic journey that shows his multiple identities visually. As soon as he sees this door, he starts to experience new culture which he has despised, such as dance, popular music, and sexual love through Hermine, Pablo, and Maria.
Harry and modern popular culture encounter each other by these three people. Thus, the door becomes a passageway to Harry where he recognizes his multiple identities through the encounter with the unfamiliar popular culture. Additionally, the door is an exit to the reality to Harry who is standing between the old stone wall (his old, classical, and intellectual culture) and the new electric sign (the future, modern popular culture). Harry’s inner conflict may begin from the lack of the present.
This door is also associated with the door in the Magic Theater. Pablo introduces the Magic Theater as the “school of humor,” and Harry laughs, fully and with a feeling of wonderful release. Harry, who is half man and half wolf, relieves his mental strain by taking drugs, dancing, and listening to Jazz music. Consolidation of immortal people such as Mozart and Goethe of Harry’s dream at the Black Eagle encourages Harry to laugh at his own personality and life. Laughter is one way of healing and a newborn life. The Magic Theater shows him how liberal he is and all possibilities of his life.
The Magic Theater’s doors are opened continuously in front of Harry, and show his multiple identities visually in unusual scenes.
The first door in the Magic Theater says, “JOLLY HUNTING/ GREAT HUNT IN AUTOMOBILES” (180). Harry experiences a pleasure for murder despite being a pacifist, by shooting passing cars beyond this door. On the second door, “GUIDANCE IN THE BUILDING UP OF THE PERSONALITY. SUCCESS GUARANTEED” (191) was written. A man who looks like Pablo asks Harry to put the pieces of his personality on a chessboard. Pablo shows Harry how to infinitely reconfigure them, and Harry puts these wonderful pieces in his pocket. The third door says, “MARVELOUS TAMING OF THE STEPPENWOLF” (194), and Harry sees a man and the hungry wolf. Through the fourth door, Harry enters, “ALL GIRLS ARE YOURS” (197), and he gets to enjoy all the women he has ever wanted in his life. Finally, Harry stands in front of the final door marked, “HOW ONE KILLS FOR LOVE” (203).
These words remind him of Hermine’s request about a final command to kill her. When he returns to this final door, he thrusts the knife under Hermine’s left breast, because she was on the floor naked with Pablo. Harry kills Hermine because of jealousy on the fantastic stage, and Harry’s action may be read as a symbol of his suicide, because Hermine is a reflection of some part of Harry through the novel. It means that Harry kills the part of his ego who wants to commit suicide.
Harry’s experience in the Magic Theater seems to be visual screens of his emotional and psychic reality. The five doors question the boundary between life and theatrical art, and between reality and fantasy. Through this strange performance, Harry sees his inner conflict between his man-half and wolf-half in the realm of art or magic. Each of the five doors in the Magic Theater may suggest different meanings of life and different views of life to Harry. A door serves as connecting the two different spaces. The space is disconnected if the door is closed, and the space has a mutual understanding if the door is opened.
All buildings and houses have doors, and people go in and out only through the doors. A wall is opened by a door, and the wall is a metaphor for a barrier and the door is a metaphor for communication. The wall needs a door to be connected. The wall between the church and the hospital has a door and this door is seen by Harry. This suggests that Harry’s spiritual wall has a door, and he realizes that he can open this door into the real world. Actually, Harry walks into the ordinary people’s world that he used to hate through this door. He encounters Hermine, Pablo, and Maria, and starts to see the new world that he had never taken seriously before.
Eventually, the door between the church and the hospital are linked to the five doors in the Magic Theater. The Magic Theater shows Harry’s multiple identities, thus Harry Haller’s encounter with the “wall between the church and the hospital” is worth investigating as the case of Steppenwolf’s theme, the multiple identities, the existence of a world beyond time, and the complex nature of laughter. Harry may be seen as the figure of the 21st century, modern people who lives as outsiders. Harry expects that one day he would learn how to laugh and be a better gamer of life through realizing his multiple identities.