Tension Between 'Fences And A Lesson Before Dying'

How we see ourselves vs how others see us People always suggest others to be themselves. To not care about what others have to say about you. People try to ignore society's opinion about them, not realizing the importance it plays in identity. For a person to feel identified, they must have similarities, differences, and some type of involvement. How we see ourselves and how others see us differ in many ways, but is an important factor of our identity.“A Lesson Before Dying”, “Fences”, “This is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona”, and “Everyday Use” are all literatures where there is a tension between how the characters see themselves and how other see them. In “A Lesson Before Dying”, there is a tension between how Grant sees himself and how his community sees him. Grant has gone to a University and is now a teacher in the quarter where he grew up. To his community Grant is the most educated person in the quarter and is

Thomas identifies himself as the storyteller of the tribe. Thomas is proud of who he is and embraces his ability to tell stories. Thomas states, ‘We are all given one thing by which our lives are measured, one determination. Mine are stories which can change or not change the world. It doesn’t matter which as long as I continue to tell the stories’, ‘ It’s all I can do’ (pg. 6). Although Thomas strongly identifies himself as a part of the tribe, he is not very welcomed by the rest. For the tribe he is a strange, crazy storyteller. People are ashamed to talk to Thomas and isolate him from the rest. The tribe considers him “a storyteller that nobody wanted to listen to”, “a crazy storyteller who talked to dogs and cars, who listened to the wind and pine trees” (pg. 1, 6). Evidently, Thomas and the tribe’s opinion of himself are contrasting. These dissimilarities help shape Thomas’s