How Does Choice Shape Identity and Responsibility?
Definition
Choice
The act of selecting among alternatives because of the scarcity of resources.
- Choice links action, consequence, and responsibility.
- A helpful way to think about choice is that it is rarely a single "instant." A decision usually has:
- A build-up (pressure, values, limited information, fear, desire)
- The moment of deciding
- An aftermath (consequences, regret, justification, learning)
- This wider view makes your analysis stronger, especially when a text shows that one decision echoes through a character's life.
How Does Choice Create Consequences, Including for Other People?
- Decisions rarely affect only the person deciding.
- A "private" choice can shape other lives, sometimes unintentionally.
- This is a more complex view of choice than simply asking, "Did you do it?"
- Instead, you should be asking: "What did this allow?" and "What did the character choose not to do?"
Example
- In The Kite Runner, Amir reflects on how earlier actions may have altered another person's life.
- He recognizes that even if he did not directly cause certain events, his choices helped create the conditions for them.
- The narration uses repeated hypothetical phrasing (such as "maybe…") to show how guilt can grow from imagining alternative outcomes.
Tip
Writers often explore omission (not acting) as powerfully as commission (acting).
Exam technique
- A strong analytical sentence starter is:
- "The text suggests that responsibility includes omission, because…"
- Then refer to a moment where a character chooses silence, avoidance, or delay.
What Do Writers Do To Represent Choice?
- Narrative perspective guides judgement
- A first-person narrator can make choices feel intimate and justified, even when they are ethically questionable.
- A third-person narrator can create distance that allows readers to judge more critically.
- An unreliable narrator complicates choice by withholding information or reframing motives.
- Symbolism turns decisions into images
- Writers often use symbols to make choices memorable: a road, a doorway, a border, a test, a letter unopened.
- These images allow one character's decision to represent a wider human experience.
- Structure highlights turning points
- Decisions may be placed at chapter endings, repeated from different angles, or revisited through flashbacks to show how earlier choices "haunt" the present.
- Structure can make choice feel inevitable, sudden, delayed, or avoidable.
Example
- In poems about life decisions, a speaker may present two options as contrasting images (for example, two paths).
- The poem's impact comes from how diction, rhythm, and tone make each option feel, not only from stating the choice.
Exam technique
- Use a "both + however" structure in comparative paragraphs:
- For example: "Both texts present decision-making as difficult, however one emphasizes uncertainty through imagery while the other emphasises commitment through tone and rhythm."
Self review
- What are the three stages of a choice that a writer might explore to show its full impact?
- How does the concept of omission (not acting) change the way we judge a character's responsibility?
- How does the choice of narrative perspective (first-person versus third-person) influence how an audience judges a character's decision?
- Why do writers use structure, such as flashbacks or turning points, to represent the importance of a choice?
