on the stage? In the theatre, or in life?’
The mask reminds the audience and the actor that he or she is not the person
whose actions are being performed. Costume and makeup fulfil similar
functions, and minimalist theatre does without any of these props, as do children.
They act to play and play to learn, and in Venice and Rio de Janeiro their parents
once a year join them, taking Carnival as licence to put on a mask and become
things they are not.
The mask, then, symbolizes the difference between a fictitious identity and a real
identity, or perhaps better, between what passes as the difference between fiction
and reality. There is an actor behind the mask who represents someone else,
which, however, he could not do if he were someone else. The audience may be
gripped by the story that unfolds onstage, but they applaud the actress for her
performance. This is the backdrop of many literary works of all genres in which
questions of identity turn up ubiquitously.
Themes
In literature, we can find all the aspects and dimensions of identity discussed in
the previous chapters: identity through time, the mind–body problem, the
identity of words and things, gender boundaries, identity crisis, divided loyalty,
mistaken identity, split identity, and the demands of modernity for individuals to
have a national, social, and gender identity. Some conspicuous and
representative examples illustrate.
Recognition and persistence through time
When after twenty years Odysseus returned to his home in Ithaca, he was
mistaken for an old beggar. Until by shooting with his mighty bow the rowdy
suitors of his wife he revealed his true identity, only his wet nurse Eurykleia,
washing his feet, recognized him from an immutable identity mark, a scar on his
leg. This story from The Odyssey (verse 467) must be one of the first in world
literature on recognition and persistence of identity through time. To change
while staying the same and being recognized as such by others is an eternal
theme that occupied ancient Greek philosophers and still occupies their
successors today.