• “Who am I?” is a question that each of us asks at some time in our life. In answering, we define ourselves. The word define means “to separate one thing from all of the others.” What distinguishes the Bear from all other bears? From all other workers at the Factory? Create an identity chart for the Bear. The diagram below is an example of an identity chart. Individuals fill it in with the words they call themselves as well as the labels society gives them. What phrases does the Bear use to define himself? What words did others use to define him? Include both on the diagram.

• Create an identity chart for yourself. Begin with the words or phrases that describe the way you see yourself. Add those words and phrases to your chart. Most people define themselves by using categories important to their culture. They include not only gender, age, and physical characteristics but also ties to a particular religion, class, neighborhood, school, and nation.

• Compare your charts with those of your classmates. Which categories were included on every chart? Which appeared on only a few charts? As you look at other charts your perspective may change. You may wish to add new categories to the one you created. This activity allows you to see the world through multiple perspectives. What labels would others attach to you? Do they see you as a leader or a follower? A conformist or a rebel? Are you a peacemaker, a bully, or a bystander? How do society’s labels influence the way you see yourself? The kinds of choices you and others make each day? For example, if a person is known as a bully, how likely is he or she to live up to that label?

• Throughout this course, you will encounter words that you know but have difficulty explaining. Instead of relying only on a dictionary to define these words, develop your own working definitions. Doing so will help you can make those words an integral part of your vocabulary. The following is an example of a working definition that builds to encompass more and more information:

Bureaucracy:

like a tree or an organization

a structure that organizes the work of business or government

the system set up in the factory described in the bear that wasn’t (foreman – general manager – 3rd vice-president –and so on.)

• You may want to include pictures in your working definition. Often they reveal more about a complex idea than a definition that relies only on words. Draw a picture of a bureaucracy and add it to your working definition. Then create a working definition for the word identity. A useful reference is Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim (University of California Press, 1969). It suggests new ways of looking at ideas.

• What does the title the bear that wasn’t mean? Why didn’t the Factory officials recognize the Bear for what he was? Why did it become harder and harder for him to maintain his identity as he moved through the bureaucracy of the Factory? What is Tashlin suggesting about the relationship between an individual and society? About the way a person’s identity is defined? About the way powerful individuals and groups shape the identity of those with less power and authority?

• How does our need to be a part of a group affect our actions? Why is it so difficult for a person to go against the group? Have you ever experienced a similar problem to that of the Bear? How did you deal with it? Were you able to maintain your independence? How difficult was it to do so?

• The film, After the First, tells of a 12 year-old boy’s first hunting trip and the way he and other members of his family responded to the event. It is available from the Facing History Resource Center. The film explores the way Steve and each of his parents viewed the trip. This film is the first of many included in the course. Each was chosen to prompt discussion of sophisticated and complex moral issues. As you watch this film and others like it, try not to take sides until you have looked at the issue from each character’s perspective. The following questions can be used to guide class discussion or journal writing.

What does the scene in the kitchen reveal about Steve’s personality? His parents’ values? How does the viewer know what Steve thinks?

What is Steve’s mood at the beginning of the film? At the end? At what point does his attitude begin to change?

The relationship between Steve and his father is essential to the film. How is that relationship revealed in these scenes: in the truck on the way to the woods, when Steve learns to use a rifle, when he decides whether to shoot the rabbit, and when the film ends?

What dilemma did Steve face? What options did he have? What values were associated with each option? How did Steve resolve his dilemma? What motivated his decision? What part did cultural values play in his decision? What other factors influenced it? How hard is it to go against the group? To stand up for the things you believe in?

indicates key videos, books, and other resources. The use of these materials is highly recommended.

What does the word values mean? How do Steve‘s values affect the way he views the world? The way he acts?

After the First is a parable – a story that has a moral or teaches a lesson. To figure out the moral of the film, ask yourself what lesson Steve’s father wanted him to learn. What lesson did his mother want him to learn? How do you know her feelings? What did Steve actually learn? Then decide what the film taught you.

What do people mean when they say, “Don’t be so quick to judge?” How does it apply to the film?

Make an identity chart for Steve. What words or phrases would he use to describe himself? What words or phrases might his father add to the chart? What might his mother add?

How does the father’s attitude toward hunting apply to violence on a larger scale? (To war, for example.) Are there forms of violence that are not physical?

Most cultures have rites of passage – ceremonies that mark the beginning of a new stage in a person’s life. Many of those rites focus on the passage from childhood to adulthood. A hunting trip is a rite of passage in Steve’s family. What event, if any, seems to mark the end of childhood in your family? In your community? Is that rite of passage the same for boys as it is for girls? You may want to research and then compare rites of passage in several different cultures. What do they all have in common? What differences seem most striking? Is there a universal rite of passage?

• Sigmund Freud once posed a fateful question for humankind: To what extent can culture overcome the violence caused by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction? Is there a human instinct of aggression? What insights does After the First provide?

• How important is peer pressure to the way we see ourselves and others? How did Eve Shalen’s need to belong shape her identity? How did it affect the way she responded when another girl was mocked? Why does her response still trouble her? How do you like to think you would have responded to the incident?

• Shalen concludes, “Often being accepted by others is more satisfying than being accepted by oneself, even though the satisfaction does not last.” What does she mean? How is her story like that of the Bear in the bear that wasn’t? How is it different?

• “Hatred begins in the heart and not in the head. In so many instances we do not hate people because of a particular deed, but rather we find that deed ugly because we hate them.”² How do Shalen’s experiences support the statement? What experiences might call the statement into question?

• In Japan, students labeled as “itanshi” – odd or different – are often subject to bullying by classmates. In 1992, the Japanese reported at least thirteen bullying-related murders at junior and senior high schools. “Children bully other children everywhere, of course,” said Masatoshi Fukuda, head of the All-Japan Bullying Prevention Council. “But in Japan it is worse because the system itself seems to encourage the punishment of anyone who does not conform to social norms.” A fifteen-year-old girl, for example, was beaten to death in Toyonaka City after months of enduring insults for wearing hand-me-down public school uniforms. Her assailant told police, “She was an irritation in our faces… she dressed poorly when all other students have new uniforms every year.”³

• What does the girl’s assailant mean when he says “She was an irritation in our faces?” Who is most likely to be a victim of bulling in our society?

• A high-school student who was born in Cambodia wrote the following stanza in a poem called “You Have to Live in Somebody Else’s Country to Understand.” Compare it with the views expressed in this reading.

What is it like to be an outsider?

What is it like to sit in the class where everyone has blond hair and you have black hair?

What is it like when the teacher says, “Whoever wasn’t born here raise your hand.”

And you are the only one.

Then, when you raise your hand, everybody looks at you and makes fun of you.

You have to live in somebody else’s country to understand.⁴

• The animated film, Up Is Down, looks at the world from the vantage point of a boy who walks on his head. It describes the attempts of the adults to make the boy conform to their point of view. The video is available from the Facing History Resource Center. Also available is another animated video, Is It Always Right to Be Right? It explores what happens to a society when various groups claim to be “right.” Eve Shalen appears in the video, A Discussion with Elie Wiesel: Facing History Students Confront Hatred and Violence.

• Construct an identity chart for Anthony Wright. How does it help explain why he called his essay “Little Boxes”? Why does he find it so difficult to classify himself? When does a special designation become a box that limits a person?

• Psychologist Deborah Tannen writes, “We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups. It’s a natural tendency, since we must see the world in patterns in order to make sense of it; we wouldn’t be able to deal with the daily onslaught of people and objects if we couldn’t predict a lot about them and feel that we know who and what they are. But this natural and useful ability to see patterns of similarity has unfortunate consequences. It is offensive to reduce an individual to a category, and it is also misleading. ²

• Give examples of the ways that generalizing can be useful. Give examples of its “unfortunate consequences.” How does Wright’s essay support Tannen’s observation?

• What is Wright’s dilemma? Do you or people you know share that dilemma? If so, how do you or they resolve it? Does the reverse of Wright’s dilemma ever cause problems? That is, do people ever feel hurt because their membership in a group is not acknowledged?

• How do Tannen’s comments help explain why Wright concludes that “I cannot and don’t deserve to be generalized or classified, just like anybody else”? Do you share his feelings?

• How did Stangl view his role in the death camps? How much power did he think he had? 

• Elie Wiesel has described the process in which the Nazis reduced a person to a prisoner; the prisoner to a number; and the number to an ash, which  was itself dispersed. To what extent does Stangl’s account explain that process?

• In thinking about ways of preventing another Holocaust, what can be learned from the words of perpetrators like Stangl?