Who am I? Am I a teacher? A mother? A wife? A columnist? Where does one identity begin and theother end? We ask ourselves similar questions over and over, often surprising ourselves with our conclusions.
My seniors ask this question when they write soliloquies just before we begin reading “Hamlet,” Shakespeare’s most introspective play. “Who’s there?” are its first words, and from that moment the play is all about a search for identity, much as a student’s senior year is about finding a direction for the future.
Hamlet recites seven soliloquies, and I only ask my students to compose one. They answer the question “Who am I?” in any way they find appropriate. Just as “Hamlet” is Shakespeare’s most challenging, complex and introspective play for actors, the soliloquy is always my students’ most challenging, complex and introspective piece of writing.
Originally, I was the only person who read the soliloquies. Then a few years ago, I collected the stack of heartfelt words and read them to the class, one by one, without revealing the authors. The reaction was a stunned silence.
“You mean someone else feels the same way I do?” one student asked. “I can’t believe others think about those things, too,” another mused. Each year, they surprise one another as they listen to the series of profound observations and questions generated by the writings. It may be the only class of the year where I have 100 percent attention, beginning to end.
High school is all about conformity, yet in this assignment every soliloquy is as unique as the person writing it. One student begins quite literally: “I am a homo sapien, with functioning organs and an epidermis which encloses these in a bipedal form, a product of an eon of evolution.” Another calls himself “A paradox. I am the oxymoron who says one thing but means another. My beings contradict.”
A third student spends a page figuring out that she wants to be a superwoman: a soccer coach, a music teacher, a pilot, a mother of six. She wisely concludes, “Except everything could go wrong. One small or big thing could ruin my dream … I want to be someone who has a dream, but has room for error, change, and disappointment. I have now figured out who I am. I am a senior in high school who is very confused on the rest of my life.”
Just when we have nearly OD’d on “deep thoughts,” there are refreshingly candid observations: “Who am I? HA. What an odd question,” or “I bet you are expecting a peek into my soul or my inner being. Well, you’re not going to get one.”
Hamlet, in his third soliloquy, remarks, “What an ass am I!” — an observation that, thankfully, has never appeared in my students’ writing.
Hamlet — with no job, or homework, or college essays to write —has time to frequently ponder all his flaws and strengths. My students have none of his leisure. But once a year, they penetrate the surface of their apparent conformity and — to everyone’s fascination — reveal their own insecurities and contradictions with a unique blend of intelligence and humor.
Erica Jacobs teaches at Oakton High School and George Mason University. Email her at [email protected].
