Analysis Of Amin Maalouf's In The Name Of Identity

The topic about identity has been an ongoing debate for centuries. Some individuals believe that identity has been set since the day a person was born, although this may be true, others believe that it is constantly interchangeable throughout a person’s lifetime; this is what Amin Maalouf believes. According to the Maalouf, he asserts in his book In the Name of Identity that every individual has his own unique set of an identity hierarchy, which consists of affiliations and allegiances. The most dominant aspect of an individual’s identity manifests when one allegiance is under attack. It is evident that a change in the hierarchy will trigger fundamental changes in the individual 's behavior. For this reason, the poet Mahmoud Darwish’s basis

For instance, in the poem “I belong there”, he writes “I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon, a bird’s sustenance, and an immortal olive tree.” Although the people of Palestine are forced to immigrate, the meadows, the moon and an olive tree do not. He uses the word immortal to describe an olive tree because even though the Israelis took away the land from the Palestinians, they can never take away their identity. The olive tree might be in Israeli territory; however, its roots belongs to the Palestinians and those roots will never die like the integrity of its

In chapter five of his book, he argues about how hard it is for immigrants in foreign countries to find their identity since they feel conflicted with their ethnical identity and their new national identity. Mahmoud Darwish himself is an immigrant. He was only six years old when he encountered his first exile due to the Israeli occupation of his homeland. His family was then forced to move to Lebanon in 1948 since the Israeli army burnt down his village in order to guarantee no Palestinian would ever return. He then moved back to occupied Palestinian territory and he felt as though he was an immigrant because it is no longer his country. In this part of his life, he composed a poem called Rahman, he writes “home, for we have no home”. Darwish was stating that he technically was home; however, he did not feel as though he was because he did not have one