How to mold your new identity: masking or shedding

Identity is a strong recurring theme in Sayed Kashua’s 2010 novel Second Person Singular.  One of the two main characters, an Arab lawyer, receives no name throughout the entirety of the novel. Perhaps Kashua was trying to embed irony into the lawyer’s situation, leaving him nameless throughout the story of him reconciling his identity. The lawyer has worked his entire life to create the illusion of perfection-- his entire identity hinges on this. He drives the nicest car, eats the best food, surrounds himself with other seemingly perfect, diverse people, always “worried about… what the neighbors will say” (Kashua 232). He does this in order to feel accepted in Israel, in order to gain the trust of his community. He has to live the purest, most perfect life to do this. He identifies with this Arab man who’s educated, highly qualified, gives back to the community. All of this is absolutely obliterated, however, when he stumbles upon a letter that may bring his entire marriage down in flames. The lawyer tries to keep a handle on this by hunting down the other man.

I believe this desperate, rage-filled act by the lawyer highlights the severity in which he ties his identity to the outward appearance of success. A successful man has a healthy, successful marriage, and our lawyer is driven to achieve certain levels of success he-- and his community-- deems appropriate. The lawyer has to remedy his crumbling identity because without it, he’s nothing.

The novel’s other main character is an Arab man named Amir, a social worker. Amir is a social worker in Jerusalem, who right before quitting his job to care for a vegetative man, meets a woman named Laila. They dance, and Laila asks him to call her. In the meantime, Amir accepts a job to care for a vegetative Jewish man, Yonathan, whom he resembles quite a bit. Amir soon begins to assume this man’s name, using his new Jewish identity to get into a prestigious art school-- admissions being something that he would not have been granted if he’d applied as an Arab man.

Eventually the two men’s paths converge, as the man that the lawyer is tracking down turns out to be Yonathan, whom the lawyer mistakes for Amir. Both men are Arabs living in the city of Jerusalem trying to gain acceptance from their community, but the two men use opposing techniques when trying to achieve their mutual goals. The lawyer devotes himself to creating a new identity, one of an Arab man who’s qualified, trustworthy, and successful. Amir, on the other hand, decides to shed his old identity as an Arab social worker. He quits his job and assumes the identity of Yonathan, a Jewish man. Ultimately, both men enjoy varying levels of success; they do give themselves new identities. More interesting than the outcomes of their endeavors, perhaps, is the dichotomy of their methods.

By shedding his identity, Amir is able to start with a clean (Jewish) slate, impersonating someone he’s not-- living a lie essentially. The lawyer instead masks his identity, hiding behind expensive things, fancy people, and a faulted marriage. Kashua does a beautiful job of illustrating the mentality and rationale of these two Arab man. They desire to create their identity in such a turbulent world, however the repercussions of doing so can be unpredictable, as the two men discover.