5th September 2017

Significant Connections

Intro: The hiding of identity can end in multiple ways which can consist of heartbreak, split from family and even death of family or peers. This is shown in 4 texts which include The Great Gatsby by F. Scott. Fitzgerald, The Amazing Spiderman 2 directed by Marc Webb, The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty and The Boy in Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne.  All four texts are connected through the Illusion of identity resulting in a bad outcome.

The first text: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott. Fitzgerald shows the illusion through the main character of the novel which is J Gatsby. This is because Gatsby has provided himself with a fake identity to get the girl of his dreams. This whole persona is linked with lies starting with his family heritage. He states this by saying “I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West — all dead now. I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.” This is bad for Gatsby because he had to change every part of his life to get the girl of his dreams. Another reason for this being bad is that he isn’t happy with his parent’s success so he removes them from his life to create his own perfect persona. In my opinion, this would be a turning point in a relationship if Daisy had known what Gatsby has done to make his life perfect. Daisy stated in the novel “I certainly am awfully glad to see you.” This says that Daisy was happy to see him but didn’t take notice of the lies he was saying make sure he impressed her. Gatsby is using this persona to protect Daisy in a way because he wants to be with, yet he doesn’t want to hurt her so he becomes the ideal man for her. As for Gatsby doing everything to obtain Daisy he is unable to succeed with his attempts. This is a bad result for Gatsby which ruins his life and makes him lose all of those years chasing her for nothing.

Second Text: The Amazing Spiderman 2 shows the illusion of having two personas, Peter Parker and Spiderman. Peter Parker hides his other identity from family and friends to protect them. This is because his Spiderman persona is full of crime and violence that is very life threatening so he wants to keep everyone away from that. Peter ends up ruining this promise for himself as his girlfriend knows about him being Spiderman. Peter is very cautious of the people around him because he had killed his girlfriend’s father and he was very distraught and didn’t want it to happen again. Peter ends up breaking up with this girl for her safety, he says “I do love you but what if something happens to you just like your father because of me.” He also continues to say “I can not let that happen.” This shows that he does not want to let her go but he had to because he could not let anything happen to her. This also gives an insight that he cares a lot about other people because he hides this side of him away from others lives to keep them out of harm’s way. Later in the film, this girl ends up coming to a fight of his regarding power which she knows inside and out. Spiderman stutters “what are you doing here” and continues to say “you can’t be here right now, I’m not messing around, you can’t be here right now.” This shows how the situation is bad for her and Spiderman persists to say that she should not be here because there is a very high risk of her being hurt or even killed by the results of Spiderman which he doesn’t want to happen from the start of the film. In the end of this scene, the girl ends up dying which breaks Peter Parker as this was the one reason he was trying to keep away from this girl. The relates to the first text because Gatsby and Peter Parker have two identities to protect people. Although Gatsby only shows 1 side of his persona he still does it to protect Daisy as he knew his previous self-wasn’t good enough for her. As Gatsby protects Daisy, Peter Parker hides that Spiderman is him from family and friends to protect them as this life is full of violence. These especially relate with their endings because they both end in a bad way. For Gatsby, he is unable to obtain Daisy as he gets murdered for doing a hit and run with another character. In the Amazing Spiderman 2, The girl that Peter told his Spiderman too was killed.

The Third Text: The Sniper shows the illusion of hiding the things you do from loved ones and friends. This is shown as the main character is a Republican in the Civil War. He hides this from everyone because he didn’t want to put them in harm. He has a brother that has done the same thing but they don’t know what each other are doing. The brother was apart of the Free Staters which were fighting against the Republicans at the time.The sniper was sitting on the top of building looking out for enemies as he defended his base. He shot a member and a passage in the story said “He felt a sudden curiosity as to the identity of the enemy sniper whom he had killed…Perhaps he had been in his own company before the split in the army.” This shows that he was happy that he had made a difference and he wanted to know the look of the dead soldier. The story continues and another passage says “Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother’s face.” This shows that he had shot his brother which was on the other side. He would’ve known this if he had expressed what he was doing to his family as obviously, it ended in a bad way. As he was hiding his identity from his family to not put them in danger it resulted in a bad way as he had killed his brother because he had hidden from the family that he was on the other team. This is compared to the amazing Spiderman from the ending. In Spiderman, Peters girlfriend was killed and in the sniper, the brother was killed. Spiderman was different though as he had told the person who was killed about what he was doing but in The Sniper he didn’t.

Fourth Text: The Boy in Striped Pyjamas shows the illusion of hiding the job/profession from family and friends as it is a bad thing regarding war. This is shown in the book as the father of Bruno is apart of gassing Jews as he is apart of a Nazi and he runs Auschwitz. The father did not tell his wife or Bruno. They moved closer to the camp but he didn’t tell them why. Bruno was very curious of the smoke rising from the distance. Later in the novel Bruno see’s the camp and says “They’re very far away of course, but it looks like there are hundreds. All wearing the striped pyjamas.” Although Bruno can see the people in the camp he is still oblivious to why they are there because he is young and doesn’t know a lot about the war between the two sides. Bruno is still curious so he wants to explore this camp even though his father has ordered him not too. He goes and sees a boy sitting down by the large fences. He wants to know everything so he asks a lot of questions as his father would not tell. Bruno keeps going and then during one trip, he goes inside to help this boy find his father. If the father was able to tell his family what he was doing he could have prevented the curiosity of Bruno. Bruno is also young which makes him have a quiet and adventurous mind which is why he was exploring. Once Bruno goes in they start to get escorted as the guards think that Bruno is apart of them. A passage in the book said for Bruno “[Bruno] didn’t know what everyone looked so frightened about—after all, marching wasn’t such a terrible thing-and he wanted to whisper to them that everything was all right.” As you can see in this passage Bruno just thinks that they are marching and he is very confused about the reactions everyone had around him and you can see that he cares about other people by the way he wanted to tell that everything is okay. After this, all of the men and boys including Bruno was put into a gas chamber and were sent to their death. The rest of the family were distraught but could have easily prevented by no hiding it and expressing why not to go there and why it is a bad place. Obviously, this has a bad ending with the death of Bruno which provides a link to the previous text as Bruno was apart of a family and the death in The Sniper was also a family member. It also links with The Sniper because they are both hiding their profession from family members and both ending in a bad way.

I believe that the hiding of identity can result in many situations with hiding it from people for a better outcome or revealing it having a better outcome. Within all the texts they are all linked with bad endings and the illusion of hiding things from family and friends. In The Great Gatsby, the character Gatsby used a fake identity and hid his previous one from the world to get the girl of his dreams. In The Amazing Spiderman 2, Peter Parker hides his Spiderman side from family and friends except for his girlfriend. In The Sniper, the main character hid his profession from his family which was being a sniper for the Republican side and his brother doing the same thing although on the Free Staters side and finally The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, the father was unable to express his profession nor the surrounding of them to Bruno. What links all of these together is the ending as they all end badly with all of them ending in deaths.

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