Exploring+issues+of+identity+and+belonging

// December 2010 marked the 30th anniversary of the assassination of John Lennon. Mark Chapman was found guilty of the assassination. __Chapman’s testimony gives us some clues to what it means NOT to have a sense of identity__. Chapman said that just before the shooting: "I remember saying in my mind, 'What if I killed him?" "I remember thinking perhaps my ﻿__identity__﻿ would be found in the killing of John Lennon." // // Another clue to Chapman’s lack of self-image is his fixation in __childish concepts of identity__. "I have always loved children," he said. "I think maybe I loved them so much, __identified__ with them so much, that it became a confused kind of thing." // // At the sentencing hearing, Chapman was asked if he had anything to say, he rose and read a passage from __The Catcher in the Rye__, when Holden tells his little sister, Phoebe, what he wants to do with his life: “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all” //
 * // Belonging //**