College is the first time we have separated and until now I hadn’t realized how differently we saw things or how different we experienced the same events. We’ve always said to people that we’ve had the same experience and lived the same life. Same school, same class, same teachers, same everything.
My best friend and I have been together since we were in second grade. I can agree with Baldwin on this because of a recent observation I’ve made. Every individual’s experience is private, personal and in Baldwin’s words “a very largely speechless affair”. That is to say there is no such thing as a “common experience”. This is evident when we says “the moment one thinks about it, it becomes apparent that there is no such thing”(91). Baldwin prove the idea that people who go on the same journey have the same common experience wrong. It is expected that one would think that all military people have the same experience and go through the same thing. I think of the army uniforms and discipline. When I think of the military I automatically think of war or battle. Baldwin believes that this doesn’t answer the question of what they came to Paris to find when he states ” the assumed common denominator, which is their military experience, does not shed in this question as much light as one might hope.īaldwin speaks of military experience, but what exactly is this military experience. This however doesn’t explain their presence in Paris.
In the excerpt it is noted that the common denominator of the American students in the student colony in was their “military experience”(91). James Baldwin’s ” A Question of Identity” from Notes of a Native Son depicts self discovery as he discusses how Americans in the student colony in Paris relate to European culture. They don’t know who they are or understand their significance in this world. Some may get lost along their journey and lose themselves. Every individual’s journey is different despite how similar it may be to another individual’s journey. All individuals have a journey through life.
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