Identity | Themes (Part 4.2)
This is part 4 of the series “The Place Where Conviction and Insecurity Collide”. See original post here.
COLLISION: Themes
Identity
That organization I often mention—the nonprofit rehabilitating young men while simultaneously focusing on leadership development, trade skills, professional preparation, etc., is so near and dear to my family’s heart, we currently have a nineteen-year-old living in the room across the hall from my study. I can smell his shoes as I type.
This is the ninth individual to move into our home, most being graduates of this program. We wouldn’t take them in so trustingly had the decision been foisted upon us at the start. By the time a young man asks, months of his transformation are already underway (though far from over). The kind of transformation that involves humility, sobriety, and a proper application of deodorant.
We get them at a precarious fork in the road, after their graduation, when they reenter adulthood in the real world. Therefore, everyday, my husband and I are surrounded by the ebb and flow of life-change. It’s messy; it’s meaningful; and it has taken over my kitchen. What makes the mess worthwhile is that miracles are walking in our midst. Some boys come from traditional homes with normal parents who just tried to love their rebellious kid. Others from the backseat of a broken down car where they used to sleep in the cold. Others still from drug-peddling alleys on the street. And more than I wish to report, from the brink of suicide.
But that was only what they did. It is no longer who they are.
Their thinking has been altered. They found a future and a hope. They were given a new name.
Perhaps not literally, but in all the ways that count. The “old man”, they call him, is gone. His season is finished. A new man has been born in his place.
So what am I getting at here? Simply this: I cannot deny that my eye-witness account of the program’s success has intimately influenced my character development throughout The Haidren Legacy series. It’s definitely why I collect so many male side-characters. And why I permit them to love each other so deeply. Subsequently, one of the organization’s staple axioms planted itself in the pages of Book 3.
“Identity informs behavior.”
~Bill Spencer, co-founder of Narrow Gate Lodge
What we love informs who we are, Aquinas wrote, and according to Spencer, that moored identity naturally informs our behavior. This principle colored Luscia’s character arc to an extent, but completely uprooted Zaethan’s. After the events and revelations at the end of Book 2, our haidren to Darakai finds himself beaching foreign shores, knowing just as much about the House of Boreal as he does his own name. Understandably, this rocks Zaethan at his innermost levels. He doesn’t know who he is or what he’ll become. All he knows is the pain that got him there.
And that is the most promising place he’s landed yet.
“Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.”
~Charles Spurgeon
Ironically, as Zaethan told Luscia in the last book, “the pot is not named by the tool that shaped it”. Neither are you and I. We are named after what we love and by who we serve. The wilderness of Boreal tests this within Zaethan’s spirit—does he actually think its true? If so, what name will he wear now and who will bestow it? So much of Zaethan’s identity was always tied to his position, particularly the one inherited from his parents.
When that is questioned, what is left behind? Is that man worthwhile? Was he worth following into the dark?
If an author wants to change a character’s behavior, then his identity must change first. The man Zaethan was, the person he’d touted himself to be, will not make the choices (or fight the same battles in the same way) as his future self—not to the degree that Orynthia requires. His identity is undergoing an evolution. Whether he realizes it or not, the Quadren needs his new name even more than he does.
Keep Reading
>>> Next Theme: Virtue vs. Vice
Experience these themes in House of Boreal by embarking on your journey through Orynthia today!
