The Use of the Public I in Denoting the American Identity - Essay Example

The American characteristics may perhaps be the “I” surrounded by the American cadaver expedient in the American lyric "Don't Let Me Be Lonely" by Claudia Rankine. This can be expounded to convey that the characteristic of being American, a person who is social, would be personal self.

To discuss a little boy aged 13 who is convicted of killing and sentenced as a grown-up, the application on him is done to a transposable “we” or “I” that involves the tale of the boy’s destiny from far afield. The state’s legal choices are the ways affecting the individual as suggested by the use of pronouns by Rankine in the story. People are prejudiced by societal learning and knowledge that they want or desire, but all experiences are personalized based. “I, or we, it hardly matters, seek out the story in the Times”. The author Rankine expresses the conceived notion that is not addressed decisively and the gulf of individual encounters in spite of shared, public knowledge. The author says; that at this moment, we are alone with the facts, as he will be when he understands. Rankine names this as what is not written in the times by this child being tried as an adult. Rankine states,

“He was tried as a dead child…In the time it takes for the appeal to happen he will be a dead child in an adult prison. He will be alive as someone else” (Rankine, 67).

The boy’s sentencing is a definite exemplar of the “I” being portrayed by the radical and executes an instance of Arendt’s discussion of the personal and communal dominion wherein the individual dominion decides the universal dominion. An interview with Claudia Rankine attributed that when she was writing this book she was mirroring Antigone’s pledge to the state. Hegel proposes that the female gender by description is contrary to the more communal and interested in the hush-hush, the conjugal, the not public, and the family. Eventually, in the appraisal of Antigone by both Rankine and Hegel, the states’ interests are not contrary to family interest and self but are the awareness of the state. A desire in the person is a desire in the community as it is openly well-versed and sways the public.

With the absence of the “I”, the possibility of the existence of social and social position is invalid. Adorno states publicly the factualness of experience inside the lyric poem to be determined position for excavation and comprehending of history and culture. According to Rankine, the analysis of the “I” happens in the incapability to link and is indicative of the American modern-day age of technological advancements for discussion that seems to intensify separation and discrimination.

“I apologize for not knowing why I am alive. I am sorry. I am sorry. I apologize. In real life, oddly enough, when I am fully awake and out and about if I catch someone’s eyes, I quickly look away” (Rankine, 98).

The looking away, the connecting inability, is the basis of the disintegration of the “I”.

“Perhaps this is the form apologies take in real life”.

The speaker puts across the fact that when one averts his eyes, it is a symbol of being apologetic. Yet again, even if averting one's eyes is a symbol of apologizing, the “I” goes on with, “despite the fact that I look away I almost always feel guilty…I feel as if I have created a reason to apologize, I feel the guilt of having ignored that thing—the encounter….” There is an acknowledgment of intelligence of what ought to have or should have cropped up and the associated encumber. The author says, she could have speechlessly alleged, that she sees you watching her and she is sorry for not being perceptive about why she is living.” The defragment of the “I” commences from the encounter of the missed chance to assure oneself in the coming across with the other. The defragmentation happens, the pasting of self, happens “after I have looked away, I never feel as if I can say, Look, look at me again so that I can see you so that I can acknowledge that I have seen you so that I can see you and apologize.” In a manner, by not recognizing the other, assuring oneself, and going forward, the “I” turns out to be draped up in agonizing over the encounter. “I” gives up its mandate to affirm oneself as an “I” to the other. By changing the direction of one's eyes, shying away, shunning the experience, rather than being into the experience, there is the absence of “I”. Hence, showing the vitality of the communal swap in the reification of the personal “I”.