Self Identity

Running head: SELF IDENTITY
SELF IDENTITY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

SELF IDENTITY
1
In cooperation, Stan Grant’s talking to my Country as well as Garth Davis’s film
‘Lion’, the man seeks their real identities in the world. This search for one’s identity is the
basis for both of these texts. Every individual has an inherent need to belong. Whether it
means a ‘cultural’ identity or a connection with one’s family, the desire to find and return to
one’s roots is intense in all of us (Hogg et al., 2017). The author of the book ‘Talking to my
Country’ is an Australian aboriginal people back in his country. This bond that we share with
people from our own culture or race is essentially the search for our ‘roots’. In the movie, the
film-maker constructs the perspective of an Indian boy, and his Australian adopt a family and
how they cope with his quest his actual family back in India. This quest is symbolic of the
journey that Saroo has to undergo to find his real self, who he was before his life changed.
The two works in their different ways to deal with an identity crisis and a deep desire for
acceptance and belonging.
Garth Davis’s movie ‘Lion’ describes one man’s brave attempt to resolve with his lost
roots. The challenges faced by the protagonist are explored with a lot of sensitivity and
understanding. The cultural and economic disparity that Saroo witnesses leave him as
astounded as it leaves the viewer (Koltay, 2015). The power of our desire to search for our
roots is shown in all its glory in this movie as the protagonist crosses all barriers to find his
long-lost family.
The real culture identity has been depicted in this film. The movie opens in a village
of India where Saroo grows up amongst the support of his family. Despite the poverty which
they face together, they share a strong bond of love which bin. Here it was difficult for him to
find his real identity. As a child Saroo experience a cultural confusion, when trying to figure
out what a knife and fork were, or rules to sports. The situation or the circumstances have
described the real cultural identity of that society in search of the self-identity.

SELF IDENTITY
2
The place is also the most significant factor for the self- identity. Where we come
from along with the culture of our people is a strengthening component of identity
foundation. Consequently, the emotional feeling of being lost from home or without one in
itself is a psychologically disturbing factor (Mitchell, 2017). Despite the outer display, the
underlying curiosity and desire to belong is practical. The questions asked by the authors or
the filmmakers of books and movies depicting this theme are essentially the same. ‘Who am
I?’, ‘Why do I feel that I do not belong here?’, and ‘Where have I come from?’ ‘Why am I
different?’ all these questions come from similar feelings of displacement and emotional
upheavals that such individuals have to go through in life (Kollontai, 2016). In a sense, we all
want to feel safe and secured by a family and a similar cultural or geographical environment.
The disintegration of family units begins as a result of various factors in society. For
instance, the case with Saroo’s disappearance from home town to an unknown street of
Calcutta separates him from his family and friends and keeps him away from home and the
society he knows. The incident means he cannot practice his ways of life and feel free to be
himself because out in the street, he’s always running and hiding for safety.
In Stan Grant’s text, discrimination and socio-political racism restricted his abilities to
be free to belong to his society. He states that in 1970 when the government was paying
allowances for children to stay in school, he together with his cousin were chased away and
told that it was better to abandon school altogether due to their ethnicity (Schwartz &
Halegoua, 2015). He goes ahead to explain that that was the space that history had made and
received for people like them. Despite his admittance to his circumstantial fate, Grant keeps
fighting for recognition of his culture and tribe through education which is described as his
breakaway route.