Individuality

Growing up is stressful. Not only having to stray away from holding your parents’ hands all the time, but also trying to find yourself. Kids, especially in middle school, have difficulty finding and staying true to themselves. Kids are so influenced by their peers and the need to be accepted by others that they will change themselves to meet the criteria of the group. The kids are under so much peer pressure that any strand of their true selves is lost. The kids at this age are losing what they do not even have yet. They do not know who they are and everyone around them is trying to tell them who they should be. Children are so conflicted by adults and other kids their age that they get overwhelmed.
The book Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison portrayed the struggle of finding yourself really well. This African American adult living in a primarily white society shares the same conflict as children in our society do today. All throughout the book, the narrator remained nameless. We never learn his real name because he doesn’t know who is really is. The narrator is trying to find his true self throughout the entire book. He feels invisible to everyone because of his skin color. When he tries to be himself and stand out as an individual through his African American heritage, many people think of him as unimportant and don’t pay any attention to him. When he blends into society, he loses his real identity to the rest of the group.
The narrator slightly finds his identity in when he joins an organization called The Brotherhood. The group even gives the narrator a name, but the audience is never told the name the narrator was given. The name is significant because the narrator finally found belonging in a group. However, the group turned out to not be what he expected or wanted and the narrator opted out. The book ends with the narrator going underground in his secret home to find his true self and identity, since the identity he was given in the group turned out to not be whom he individually is at all.
The children in our society mirror the invisible man by remaining nameless in the sense that they do not know who they are yet and are still looking for themselves. Our children search for belonging and often fall under peer pressure to feel important. When our children fall into peer pressure, they blend into society and lose their real identity to the rest of the group. The Brotherhood in the book stands for different cliques that children face today. The cliques make the children feel a sense of belonging, but the children often have to change their selves to feel the group’s acceptance. Sometimes children can recognize that the clique is not what they expected and leave the clique, like the invisible man with The Brotherhood. Children then continue to search for themselves like the narrator did when he went underground.
Children today should not have to be faced with so much peer pressure at such an early age. Children fall under peer pressure without even having a chance to stand up for themselves because they haven’t had enough time in life yet to find themselves. If peer pressure wasn’t such a strong, persistent factor in life today, children would have a stronger foundation in knowing and staying strong in who they are. Children are not given enough time to realize that their individual self is more important than the self that the group and rest of society tells them to be.