Gunnar struggles with his identity throughout the novel. It does not that other people keep putting identities on him as well. The first identity put upon him is "the funny cool black guy" at his school in Santa Monica. Gunnar seemed content with this identity because it fit who he felt he was. This all got turned around when his mom decided to move to Hillside, and inner-city community in the middle of Los Angeles. At first, he gets labeled as a geeky kid who acts white. Soon, he adopts a nerd identity, but quickly leaves that behind to be a basketball legend. While he is a basketball legend, he is also well-known for his poetry across the country. He now has two relatively famous identities. When he goes to the high school in the valley, the basketball identity overshadows the poetry one. When he takes the SAT, he gets a new identity from the perspective of his counselor and colleges. He is now also a good student. When Gunnar gets to college, the poet identity prevails over the others and that is now the main way he is known on campus.
Does Gunnar see himself the same way that others see him? I don't think so. He is very apathetic about basketball and the fame that comes with it, so there is no doubt that Gunnar would be happy to shed the basketball identity. I fact, on his last day on the high school basketball team senior year, he makes fun of the identity by dressing up in minstrel gear. When it comes to poetry, I think Gunnar enjoys writing poems, but is not especially excited to be known across the country. He's not going to do anything about it, but it is not his choice to have his poems read nationwide to begin with. He doesn't publish his book to share his poetry, but so that he doesn't have to go to college anymore. It is hard to know how he sees himself, but I don't think it is defined by basketball, poetry, or any one of the things in his life that other people use to define him. We never really get to understand his self-identity, even in the prologue or epilogue. We do see, however, that he considers himself, to some extent, the leader of a people. I think that Beatty uses Gunnar's series or outside identities to enforce the idea that Gunnar's life is a show.
I believe Gunnar does in fact love poetry and basketball but he does not enjoy the pressure put on him to perform well. I feel he is searching for something in his life that he did because he loved. He never had an activity or something that he did that did not become somehow for someone else.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Gunnar, throughout the book, experiences many different identities in the different places he goes. I think its also true two large aspects of his identity include basketball and poetry. Its kind of cool to think about this because we don't normally (or really ever) associate a great basketball player with a renowned poet, but in the semi-comedic setting Beaty has created, this is the case. The fact that Gunnar's identity changes so greatly and goes through many stages makes him similar, in my perspective, to the narrator in Invisible Man. They both are constantly experiencing new events and places changing their identity until the final image of each character shows itself and each realizes the "broader picture" of society.
ReplyDeletenice post! I think that the way Beatty framed this novel having both basketball and poetry be something that Gunnar became famous for was a really interesting choice. Gunnar's identity crisis is very similar to invisible man's but the narrator goes about solving it through introspection while Gunnar has many close and impactful relationships with the people around him. I feel like this constant sense of getting identities thrown on him and then Beatty adding in humor is very similar to the "minstrel show" aspect that we talked about in class.
ReplyDeletegreat post, like a lot of the other books we've read, the concept of identity does seem to be really central to this novel and it's especially complex since Gunnar has so many natural talents that people use to define him. One of the most interesting things, like you say, is how Gunnar rebels against so many of the identities people put onto him, even the ones that would seem to be positive, like being a gifted poet or having good grades. It seems like when he eventually decides to wait for the bomb, a lot of his motivations have to do with how he's frustrated with other people deciding on his identity for him and not letting him be himself.
ReplyDeleteI think this is really interesting. Gunnar seems to really reject getting a single identity and he never identifies really strongly with one particular thing. When people identify him as something it reminds me of Invisible Man, where people always think of the narrator as something very specific, pigeon holing him into a category rather than a person with many different parts.
ReplyDeleteI think that this was a big part of why Scoby was such a good friend for him; he doesn't assign him any identities. When Gunnar is still the "white guy", Scoby validates him by calling him "nigger" and then tells him that he can be both a basketball star and a poet, and tells him that he can be a poet and gay, not confining him to just one identity.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Noah. I think that basketball and poetry do mean a lot to him, but when there is the pressure placed on him to perform extremely well and for winning (in the case of basketball) instead of just for fun and his own enjoyment, he dislikes the expectations placed on him and he wants to break out of them.
ReplyDeleteGood post! Gunnar enjoys basketball, poetry, etc. until they become his identity and people expect him to do these things for them. This dynamic makes Gunnar feel like he is only performing for the satisfaction of the audience and takes the fun out of things he enjoyed doing
ReplyDeleteThe poetry is an especially interesting example, to me, because it would seem that poetry could be seen as an expression of identity with some validity--the writer is expressing himself and his relationship to the world through his words. In _Invisible Man,_ we talked about how the act of writing gives the reader the idea that we "see" the narrator in a way that no one else is really able to. But with Gunnar, poetry isn't a consolation--not only because he sees it as an evasion of political or social engagement (during the riots), but because we see how poetry too exists in this public context and actually resembles the basketball dynamic a lot, where Gunnar is a "legend" and a "star" who is chased down the street by his fans. Even this one context where it would seem Gunnar could assert his own identity on his own terms exists in this necessarily public context, and as with so much else in this novel, the public context ruins it.
ReplyDeleteThis was a really thought-provoking post. As the other comments have said, Gunnar does like poetry and basketball, but for very different reasons than the general public, who likes Gunnar's abilities. He sees how absurd his public image is, and even goes so far as to make fun of it. I think throughout the whole book, Gunnar is subtly making fun of each of his public identities, while trying to find himself at the same time. He sees the way the public sees him, but he doesn't necessarily agree with it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's possible that Gunnar is most comfortable with the "funny black guy" identity because it was the first one given to him. This was the identity he was essentially born into and grew up with. However, I feel like grown-up Gunnar wouldn't see himself as the funny black guy anymore. In fact, it's interesting how he almost reverses his identity entirely; he struggles to be taken seriously towards the end of the book. Even this "leader of the people" identity is one that the people place on him, that he isn't really quite sure what to do with. I think that as the novel goes on, Gunnar's view of himself distances from how other people see him.
ReplyDelete