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I am looking for literary works (preferably classic novels) that focus on personal identity. One novel that I have read that really hit this theme was Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Novels that similarly focus on personal identity (though I could do without the racial commentary) are of great interest to me. Thank you in advance for any recommendations.
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man by James Joyce
The Quest by C.P. Snow
An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - personal identity through his friend Gatsby
East of Eden by John Steinbeck - theme of Cain and Abel
1984 by George Orwell - how protagonist develops into an end
I should specify that I am also seeking English-language novels. Thanks (esp. to mal4mac and whosis for their recommendations).
Beckett's Endgame, though an Absurdist play, explores questions of identity from a post-existential sort of perspective.
Would agree with Metamorphosis (also 'The Trial' by Kafka, though these would be translations), Portrait of the Artist, even Ulysses by Joyce if you're brave, Hamlet..... I would add some Victorian classics which have modernist traits like Middlemarch, Cranford, An Ideal Husband. Also, antebellum American literature like Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, Bostonians by Henry James, or slave narratives where the literary community was trying to create an 'own' literature, unique to America.
Identity's a huge theme, you can play around with it.
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an excellent choice on your part. Not only is the novel ground-breaking, universal, brilliantly written, and a host of other well-deserved accolades, it is just as timely and significant in 2014 as it was when it was first published over 60 years ago.
On the theme of personal identity, Jeffery Eugenides's Middlesex is perhaps too recent to be considered a "classic," but I'm absolutely certain that one day that will be the case. The plot and the characters especially are engrossing.
P.S. Give The Bluest Eye a look. It's written by a Nobel Prize Winner, Toni Morrison.