AS A YOUNG adult, I am at a critical juncture in life where I feel myself developing and discovering what I hope to be a unique self-hood. The college arena seems like a prime avenue to explore this development. Given that technology has positioned itself to play such a large and crucial role in our culture, however, it is equally and vitally important to find those avenues of moral guidance and instruction that sometimes are not easily visible. These forms of instruction can lend a hand to the development of the self where technology cannot.
Being a veteran student now, I have come to realize that the search for guidance has become all the more pressing. In times of uncertainty, it is helpful to find someone who can fulfill the role of mentor when overwhelming and influential forces like the media or technology are all too willing to convince you of who you are or what you ought to become.\n"Becoming" may be influenced by outside sources, but one's development is ultimately propagated by the self. The hard part is getting to that point of self-revelation where we finally understand who we are, or should be. It often seems necessary to learn everything one possibly can, or, if so fortunate, to come into contact with a truly influential mentor. It is fitting, therefore, to mention one mentor, in particular, who has helped me to make sense of my personal development and who has helped shape my ideas about contemporary society.
This past summer, while still a student at Virginia Commonwealth University, I had the chance to work with English Prof. Katherine Nash on a summer research project for a chapter on E.M. Forster in her soon to be published book, "Feminist Politics and Narrative Ethics." It so happens that as I was researching, I came across another book, "Modernism and the Fate of Individuality: Character and Novelistic Form from Conrad to Woolf," written by Prof. Michael Levenson. His chapter on E.M. Forster was not only extremely helpful to my research, but his writing had a certain sustaining quality to it; so much so that when I discovered he was teaching a literature course at the University this fall, I was elated and immediately signed up for it.
Levenson, in his short time as my professor, has caused me to question my previous ideas and beliefs about modern society. His instruction has made members of the class assess our contemporary society, to see that where our lives are influenced by social forces they can instead be influenced by modernist authors.
Using modernist novels such as James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," Levenson has presented the bildungsroman, a literary device that many modernist authors used in which the protagonist of a novel undergoes personal and moral development. The modernists' bildungsromane have caused me to question the very nature of my maturation and place in today's society. I have walked away from many of Levenson's lectures depressed about the fate of my own world, my human insignificance and even the mortality of life. Yet such jarring and uncomfortable topics allow us to embrace and create our uniqueness as individuals forging paths in the world after college.
In his book, Levenson aims "to try humbly to open a new way of seeing." At least from my vantage point, this professor has opened my eyes and instructed me in new ways of confronting my identity in a society where helpful guidance is often masked behind media and technology. Levenson not only shows the challenges of thinking about modernism in this generation, but also is ultimately interested in the goals of a realized self-hood and finding what guidance is still available in books.
Devon Darrow's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at d.darrow@cavalierdaily.com.
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