Topic > Identity in Joyce Carol Oates's Life After High School

Valgardson, the man was bored with his life and thought he needed a change. If I were him and had everything ready: a family, a car and a house, I would never get up and leave. He didn't want to live the same lifestyle for the rest of his life. If I were him I would simply move to another house, to another province or even to another country, to get the rest. He goes through an internal struggle thinking that he is simply tired of his life and needs a change. To become like the stereotypical male in the neighborhood he goes out in, he neither shaves nor dresses up. When he stopped at a small shop to call his wife, he saw “three young men and a scruffy girl” standing at the edge of the light. To try to make it seem like he is like the four people and the neighborhood he is in, he changes his identity. I'm guilty of changing my identity just to fit in with the people who live there. In 2010, when my family went to India, we had to dress up and try to look like them. If any of the thieves saw us as strangers, who knows what they would have done to us. It changed the way he dressed and the way he was perceived by others. He wants to make it look like he stole the car so that other individuals won't rob him. The ironic thing is that he thinks the four beings will hurt him, but instead it's the policeman who ends up killing him. He stereotyped the four people as