HON 190 Marisa Alex Bejarano
Professor Matt Evans 9/25/13
Rough Draft: Levithan Summary
David Levithan author of Every Day, described the reason for why he wrote the book and what it symbolizes. He does this by connecting his own adolescent views of the world and discusses self-identification similar to sociologies Looking glass self-theory.
In the novel Every Day, A and Rhiannan are the leading characters, mostly A.
A is neither male nor female, gay, bisexual, transgendered, black, white, Hispanic, or any ethnicity at all. A completely objective being. Levithan’s reasoning behind this was because he wanted to present the idea of not being defined by your body. He brought up the questions “What if you weren’t defined, who would you be, and how would these things mold you as a person passing from person to person through A’s perspective”. His discussion was mostly based on self-identification and how this is vital especially during one’s adolescence.
A college environment plays a huge role in one’s adolescence. Although Levithan’s characters are around sixteen to seventeen years of age, he referenced that self-identification plays a huge role in college life. Being away from parents, hometown views, church views, and with the freedom to make your own decisions about how you want to define yourself, there are endless possibilities, as seen through A’s character. Within A’s experiences Levithan detailed that the clothing, race, and standards all defined A at one point because of the body exchanges depicting a view of today’s society and how judgments fall so quickly.
With the theory of the looking glass self in sociology,
“Charles Horton Cooley´s concept of the looking glass self, states that a person’s self grows out of a person´s social interactions with others. The view of ourselves comes from the contemplation of personal qualities and impressions of how others perceive us. Actually, how we see ourselves does not come from...