"Lissa. You need to concentrate!"
As I heard my mother's voice, my mind moved out of its trance, out of the bleak universe of The Road.
"What?" I asked, as I removed my right earphone.
"You need to concentrate. How can you read while you're listening to music? That's too distracting."
But she was wrong -- it was as simple as that. I needed the music in order to concentrate. If I read in complete silence, my mind would not go past three sentences without drifting off of the page and into my own thoughts. Buzt with the beat of music playing softly in the background, I could begin to read the words in a sort of rhythm, until the beat became subconscious and the world of the novel materialized into its place.
My need for music in order to read is only one example of how I cope with my relatively short attention span. I am no exception to the claims that countless modern news articles are making: people's attention spans are decreasing as modern technology becomes more and more prevalent. Various researchers are making the assertions that technologies like television and the internet are diminishing people's focus time. Shorter attention spans seem to be a larger trend in my generation than in, say, my grandparents'. Though I don't have much evidence to build upon personally, I firmly believe that I would have a longer attention span had I been born in a previous generation. I would be able to read in silence. I would be able to do all of my homework in one sitting. I would be able to be on one website and have one browser tab open at a time.
This causes me to wonder, "To what extent does a generation and/or society shape a person?"
With my personal example, it seems that my generation has shaped some of my characteristics. However, can it do more than that? I think so. I think society can shape people's beliefs and even determine their identity.
Ian McEwan's Atonement, for example, subtly illuminates the injustices of social class underneath its main plot. Both Cecilia and Robbie acknowledge to themselves that they hardly ever spoke or came across one another at Cambridge because of their differences in class. They found the situation awkward, one thinking, "that's our cleaning lady's son", and the other "there goes my mother's employer's daughter" (McEwan 74).
One reason Briony feels the need to prevent her sister Cecilia from being with Robbie is because of his obvious low rank in society. Briony, who seems to be very practical when it comes to love, sees the danger in Cecilia falling beneath her class.
But what I found the most interesting was how Cecilia and Robbie both instinctively assumed that Danny Hardman, another servant, had been the actual criminal. The novel's society's establishment of social class was engrained in every citizen's mind, including the servants. It never even occurred to either Cecilia or Robbie that a wealthy man like Lord Marshall could have actually been the guilty party, despite the overwhelming physical evidence that was visible on his face. The generation that Atonement takes place in has caused Robbie to know himself as a person of lower class. And despite his own honest character, he has been conditioned by the society to automatically associate crime and guilt with a member of lower class.
So if this is the case -- if society can have such a significant impact on one's identity, then how much of a person is his own individual, inherent self?
