"I am Piranesi. The name is not the…" — Susanna Clarke (#c457)

Card #c457IR // #c457Verbatim excerpt

I am Piranesi. The name is not the one he was born with, that was Matthew Rose Sorensen, a life he cannot remember. The House is the cause of my forgetting. His identity is not recovered; it is issued: the House took the old self and gave him a new one, and the new one is happier.

— Source: Piranesi (Susanna Clarke)

[Use when]

Someone's identity changed completely after their environment changed: maybe the self was the habitat all along.

[Why it matters]

Here identity is not dissolved or split, it is replaced, and the replacement is an upgrade. Piranesi does not want his old self back. That is the disturbing part: the book suggests identity might be a habitat rather than an essence. Put the organism in a kinder universe and a kinder self grows. Ask not who is he really? but what does the House make possible that the old world didn't?

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