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Life Experiences Are What Makes A Persons Personality Essay, Research Paper

An individuals experiences, past and present provide a significant basis for the type of person they will become. Relationships that are established during childhood and adolescence are important for the shaping of someone’s personality, as most personality development occurs in the early stages of life. Experiences that someone must deal with in the present sense also contributes to their personality. Dominick Birdsey in Wally Lambs novel I Know This Much Is True, suffered his entire life experiencing every emotion humanly possible in his current stretch of forty five years. The sad and stressful episodes of his life began to take their toll sending Dominick began to grow into a depression and question his reason for living.

Dominick Birdsey, his twin brother Thomas, his mother Connie, and stepfather Ray, “Ray is not our real father. We don’t know who our real father is. I don’t even know if Ma knows.” (91) live in Connecticut. Dominick and Thomas had to form an alliance to stand up to Ray, as he had a tendency to use his belt rather than words to punish. He was extremely strict, clearly in charge of the house, and showed little or no emotion, not even towards his wife. As a child of about eight years old, Ray has Dominick and his brother believing that part of being a man is not showing emotion, so the two grow up as little boys feeling very lonely, resulting in a lonely adulthood. The way Dominick remembers his childhood is feeling obligated to frequently rescue his brother from Ray’s abuse. Ray was always much harder on Thomas as he felt he was a mamma’s boy and had to be toughened up. “These days they called Ray’s kind of ‘toughening up’ child abuse.” (63) Dominick secretly enjoyed this special treatment to an extent, but also felt bad for the way his twin was being constantly treated. Even though Dominick was not a direct target of Rays abuse, he was still subjected to it, and as a child, exposure to violence instills fear and what become distilled anger in an adult which can potentially result in violent motives. However, past experiences can be forgotten, and people are able to move on, whereas present issues must be faced on a daily basis and be continually dealt with. In the short term, it is present day experiences that cause people to react to certain circumstances. Children are too innocent to be destructive, but an adult dealing with difficult issues may find a distasteful way to display emotion.

Dominick and Thomas were loved by their mother but because of her unpleasant childhood, she had insecurities of her own, which contributed to her passive nature, thus allowing Ray to make all her decisions and order her around as he pleased. As a child, Connie was repeatedly called ugly by her father, as she was born with a harelip. She developed a nervous stance hiding her cleft lip with her right fist. Contradictory to her childhood, she grew up to be a wonderful loving mother to her two sons and an obedient wife (perhaps not as becoming a trait), nonetheless, she was a good mother and a devout Catholic.

When it was time for the two boys to enter College, they had to move away from home and reside in dormitories. Dominick was looking forward to being on his own, while Thomas was scared to death. Thomas had secretly requested that he and Dominick share a dorm room after Dominick made it perfectly clear that he was more than anxious to break away from his other half. “I wasn’t going to live with him either? I wasn’t going to hold his hand or walk him to the library?” (321) When Dominick arrived at the dorm to discover his new roommate was his brother, he was livid. His whole life, he felt he had to protect his brother, not only form Ray, but later from the bullies in high school, and from the comments that came from under the breaths of co-workers at their summer job. “Dominick, could you please speak to Dell? Get him to stop calling me *censored*less?” (324) Thomas was teased to no end, but never in the presence of his brother Dominick.

Dominick married his first love and lover, Dessa. He was very much in love with her and she was with him. The two tried unsuccessfully many times to have a baby, before they were successful. Their baby was born healthy but later died of crib death. “She? she died. Crib death. She was three weeks old.” (247) Dessa became overwhelmingly distraught and unbearable to live with. She suggested a divorce, “I have to breathe Dominick. You suck all the oxygen out of the room.” (320) on the grounds that Dominick was unsupportive after the death of the baby. Dominick was just as upset as Dessa was, but, reflecting back from his childhood and Ray’s words, part of being a man was not showing emotion. Dessa decided that Dominick never loved the baby to begin with, so he couldn’t possibly love her. After the divorce, out of anger, or out of sadness, Dominick decided to secretly get a vasectomy.

The circumstances that seem to affect Dominick the most profoundly is the period during which Thomas began to change. Thomas became uninterested in school. He never studied or attended lectures, began to become paranoid, feeling that he was always being watched. Thomas also began to lose a significant amount of weight. “Is it drugs, Dominick? Is that why he lost all that weight?” (251) At first, Dominick thought that Thomas was just distracted because of the stress of moving away from home. “Sometimes he’s lose track of what he was doing, or drift off into a fog somewhere.” (250) Eventually, it was discovered “? by then, Thomas’ illness had already started flirting with him? nine months later there’d be no avoiding it: March of 1970 was when Thomas’ brain dropped to his knees.” (50) that Thomas’ condition was in fact schizophrenia. Thomas was diagnosed at the age of

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