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Muriel's Wedding Identity Essay

Decent Essays

An individual’s true identity will only develop once they have gone through experiences that force them to break away from societal and environmental expectations. However, this identity will not be formed until they have truly embraced and evaluated the experiences. Therefore, the development of an identity is a gradual learning process. This is evident in the film ‘Muriel’s Wedding’ directed by P.J. Hogan (1994). In this film, the protagonist, Muriel, has developed a fabricated bridal identity due to the societal pressures and expectations of the successful female. Muriel has created this identity in order to become acceptable to the patriarchal society. This notion of a fabricated identity is further demonstrated in the poem ‘Diving into …show more content…

The persona in the poem is undergoing a journey to find and observe the shipwreck which is an extended metaphor of the disasters and hardships that people go through in life. In the beginning of the journey, the persona has a mask to keep her alive during the journey. The mask represents the fake identity and the power and value that the persona places on this fabricated identity as they need it to ‘survive’ in the world. Additionally, the persona uses flippers to aid her journey, however they instead “cripple” them and force them to “crawl like an insect down the ladder”. This conveys the restrictive nature of society on an individual’s identity… However, once the persona discovers the shipwreck in stanza 8, they transform into a “mermaid”. This externalises the transformation of the persona’s identity to their true identity as they no longer need the fabricated identity. The mermaid represents the personas full adaptation and transformation to the new environment, thus demonstrating that true identity can be discovered through experiences. It also demonstrates that an authentic identity can be made of a combination of current and past identities and experiences. This is also evident in ‘Muriel’s Wedding’ as Muriel’s final identity is a combination of who she was and what she learnt as both Muriel and

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