serendipity identity

About Will and group identity

We’re talking, thinking and writing about Will, one of the three protagonists in Thomas Kings Medicine River, a particular and delightful novel, taking life easy. It deals with numerous characters in a wondrous but sole community. In individualising Wills persona, we’re mentally pointing a finger at him in search for a definition of the term “Ethnicity”, a term somehow introduced to “fuzz further the fuzziness” of marginal identification involuntary.

Before arguing ethnicity aspects in Wills performance and in his surroundings, it may be useful do define his identity, and even fuzzier, and therefore harder to grasp, his marginal constituted identity. With the help of a collection of parameters laid down in an essay by Harold R. Isaacs entitled “Basic Group Identity” this venture may be made a lot easier for us. Isaacs’s collection includes contributing features like the body itself, the social features, the name, the history and...