W N Yan Ramadhan is the name given by my parents for me. I was born in Sumedang on February 12th, 1996. I am currently a senior student of the English Department at the Faculty of Cultural Studies in Universitas Padjadjaran.
Throughout the years of studying as a student of the English Department, I've encountered various kinds of writings—ranging from short stories, novels, essays, and so on. Starting from the deceitful short-length story of Borges and I by Jorge Luis Borges to the elaborate yet mind-boggling tale of Amory Blaine in This Side of Paradise by Scott F. Fitzgerald; from the convincing yet confusing The Decay of Lying by Oscar Wilde to the reassuring and arguable idea of Tradition and Individual Talent by T.S Eliot.
Despite the mixture of genres, themes, ideas, and issues, that those writings have given to me through its words, sentences and paragraphs, I do have a fondness towards the idea of the various means in terms of defining your own self and the others. Even though my own understanding of the term 'self' itself is still vague, I do aware that there are countless things that are able to influence the construction of 'self' such as; identity, culture, language, historical aspects, and so on. Yet, I am not entirely sure whether those ideas are indeed influential in constructing 'self'. Moreover, there are also some methods in terms of how we will be able to define 'self' and perhaps the 'self' of others as well; it is either realizing it by your own, as in knowing your own 'self' with your own effort and opinions or with an assistance from the other 'self' or person around you, building and defining your self with the help of others' opinions and description. Similar to the condition of Amory within This Side of Paradise, when after all sorts of occurrences that he had experienced, he was only able to summarize and realize that he only knew his own self. Or the identity crisis that Santosh did experience in his own tale within One Out of Many by Chinua Achebe. Or the issue of 'existence' or importance that was faced by the narrator of Do You Love Me by Peter Carey. Or even the idea of equality in the tale of Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. Again, I am not sure whether I can put all of these ideas under the veil of 'existentialism' of any other 'self' related approaches or theories within the studies of literature; it is also possible that the issues that I did find within those stories are not relevant with one another at all. Nonetheless, this was only a spec of idea that comes to my head just now, knowing that it could possibly be altered in the near future, or be completely changed.
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