How Far Would You Go to Overcome Something?

How far would you go to overcome something? Our identity is shaped from our experiences, In the novel “Wonder” by R.J Palacio, the main character August (Auggie) Pullman goes through a lot of things through his life that helped shape his identity. August Pullman is the main protagonist in “Wonder”. He was born with facial deformity, which is a combination of Treacher Collins syndrome and Hemifacial Microsomia, which prevented him of going to a mainstream school up until the 5th grade, when he enrolled at “Breecher Prep Middle School.” He is the son of Isabel and Nathanial (Nate) Pullman and a younger brother of Olivia (Via) Pullman. In this essay I am going to write about how August’s identity is formed, and I am going to prove that our experiences shape our identity.

As mentioned earlier, our experiences shape out identity, I remember this one time I was with my cousins, Dre-Quan, Kimberly, Kaylẻ and Michael at the swimming pool, at this time I didn’t know how to swim, so all of my cousin were teasing me saying that I don’t know how to swim. “Yes I can!” I lied, So I told them “You guys want to see me swim?!” My cousin Kimberly said, “Sure, just don’t hurt yourself” She laughed. At first, I was hesitant, but I said to myself “Ameer you are strong, you can do this!” At that very moment, I held my breath and went under that, and I started swimming! When I came up I had a humungous smile on my face and I yelled from the top of my lungs “I TOLD YOU!!!” Then, everyone started looking at me like I was crazy, we were in a public pool and I was embarrassed. But I was still happy, I realized that I can do absolutely ANYTHING I chose to do if I believed in myself and put my mind to it. I believed that shaped my identity. My experience of swimming for the first time shaped my identity. This relates to August. This reminds me of when August, and his mom and dad (Isabel and Nathaniel) was talking about going to a real mainstream school. August didn’t want to go. According to the text in “Wonder,” Isabel says “You know if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.” This quote portrays, how Isabel is giving August a choice weather or not he wants to go to school, this will shape August’s identity because if August keeps getting choices as a child he is going to grow up thinking that he will always have choices and in the real world, you won’t always have choices. This relates to my experience because I was choosing weather or not I was going to be a punk and let my cousins keep teasing me or was I going to prove them wrong and August was choosing weather or not he was going to want to go to school or not.

Identity: the fact of being who or what a person or thing is. Another one of August’s experiences that shaped his identity is when Mrs. Garcia reacted to August’s face. According to the novel “Wonder,” August says “When I looked up at her, Mrs. Garcia’s eyes dropped for a second. It was so fast no one else noticed, since the rest of her face stayed the same. She was just smiling a really shiny, fake smile.” This quote depicts how Mrs. Garcia reacted to August’s face, she wasn’t doing it to be mean, it was a normal reaction. This shapes his identity because August probably used to people reacting to his face like that and since he has facial deformity people are going to react like that to his face all the time. That’s shapes his identity because that’s something that will always happen to him and he will see himself as the ugly boy that no one else likes to look at. This relates to my life because when I transferred from my old school back in New Orleans, to William H. Ziegler Elementary School, I was the new kid and when I walked into the classroom, the classroom got quiet. I found that ironic. I had to get used to my classroom peers and the way they acted, the way they talked etcetera. They also had to get used to my ways, and the way I talked, so on and so forth. At first people were arrogant towards me, people didn’t like me because of my style in doing things or