“Mirror Image”: External and Internal Identity
In the short story “Mirror Image”, Lena Coakley explores the relationship between internal and external identity through the life of the first successful recipient of a brain transplant. Alice, 14, has been given a new chance at life after a near fatal accident rendered her body useless; Alice’s brain has been transplanted into the body of another young girl. In the time following, Alice struggles to come to terms with who she is, now that her internal identity feels completely misaligned with how society sees her. This theme of conflicting facets of identity is paramount in “Mirror Image”, and is what my visual representation is focused on.
My visual representation of Alice’s struggles with identity is an abstracted version of the concepts I am exploring. The art piece features a clear plastic cube with a wire figure of a human within, representing external and internal identity respectively. In “Mirror Image”, Alice …show more content…
Isn’t that amazing? Even though I have a different hand. And my signature is the same too. This is me in here, Jenny. My brain is me. (2)
Her main conflict lies in how her family does not see her in the same manner as before the transplant. They know that her brain is from her old body, but her external identity- how she presents herself to the world- has changed so much that even with the influence of her internal identity she may as well be an entirely new person; “‘Okay,’ said Jenny. ‘You’re always saying that you are still you because you have the same brain, but who is to say your whole personality is in your head?” (5) Even if Alice feels as though her internal
In the short story “Mirror Image”, Lena Coakley explores the relationship between internal and external identity through the life of the first successful recipient of a brain transplant. Alice, 14, has been given a new chance at life after a near fatal accident rendered her body useless; Alice’s brain has been transplanted into the body of another young girl. In the time following, Alice struggles to come to terms with who she is, now that her internal identity feels completely misaligned with how society sees her. This theme of conflicting facets of identity is paramount in “Mirror Image”, and is what my visual representation is focused on.
My visual representation of Alice’s struggles with identity is an abstracted version of the concepts I am exploring. The art piece features a clear plastic cube with a wire figure of a human within, representing external and internal identity respectively. In “Mirror Image”, Alice …show more content…
Isn’t that amazing? Even though I have a different hand. And my signature is the same too. This is me in here, Jenny. My brain is me. (2)
Her main conflict lies in how her family does not see her in the same manner as before the transplant. They know that her brain is from her old body, but her external identity- how she presents herself to the world- has changed so much that even with the influence of her internal identity she may as well be an entirely new person; “‘Okay,’ said Jenny. ‘You’re always saying that you are still you because you have the same brain, but who is to say your whole personality is in your head?” (5) Even if Alice feels as though her internal