The Street Sweeper And Me And Earl And The Dying Girl

The idea a forced choice can still show identity is inaccurate and irrelevant when reflecting on The Street Sweeper and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. The greater truth is that choice forms identity and no greater portrayal of this idea exists than in the aforementioned texts through characters Lamont Williams, Henrik Mandelbrot, Greg Gaines and Rachel Kushner.

In The Street Sweeper, Lamont Williams, a probationary janitor at a hospital is a product of his choices. Unfairly convicted and out of prison, he lives by the motto “the trick is to stay calm and to avoid or outlast the problem”. This phrase is repeated throughout the novel to emphasise its importance to Lamont. This phrase is an integral part of his identity that was formed through the choices he made, from driving the car when his friend ran out of the liquor store to trying to remain out of trouble in prison. He was dramatically affected by the choices he made and his identity has been profoundly, perhaps permanently altered by his decisions and through him we see that when you make choices, you create and alter your identity.
In the quote "Many times…you want to die…but all the time you're thinking someone has to survive…to get the story out…so that the world will know…what they did" we see how his choice to live meant his identity became the events of the death camps and this identity was framed by the importance of telling his story. Henrik Mandelbrot's choice to live so that "the world will know" framed his identity, and this choice had such a lasting impact that, sixty years on, his identity is still the product of that choice, the choice to live so that the world could know the