RSS SubscriptionBased on Death Note, a strictly biased exploration on the philosophy behind the definition of personality.
Personality defines the inner property of an existence. It can also be described as the origin to the emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral response patterns of an individual. In fact, personality is so rudimental in the construction of an individual that many often do not question its authenticity, but simply choose to nurture it.
What does it mean when people ask you to “be yourself”?
What does it mean to “search inside yourself”?
What is “self-aware”?
Death Note is a rhetorical anime that hosts a protagonist, Light Yagami, who is anti-heroic in the subconscious level. Light was a model student with a strong sense of righteousness, before he began to grow deceptive and alter his own justice in order to protect and obtain greater power throughout the story. Soon after Light was released from imprisonment after relinquishing his notebook, the audience was given a unique opportunity to observe the drastic contrast in Light’s change of personality.
And Light said to L, “I do not want to use the emotions of a girl even if it’s to solve the Kira incident. I’m sorry but please understand, that deceiving and trampling on a girl’s good will is one that I despise and unable to tolerate the most.”
Some suggest that Light’s personality change is the exposition of the naiveness of a young mind. Others argue that this is the demonstration of the ultimate corruption of power. While different explanations flourish in different minds for Light’s change of personality, the true explanation is an even more elementary one – This is the manifestation of the volatile nature of an individual personality.
All children are born with a receptive mind, allowing personality to slowly form with history and adaptation based on environmental factors. While an established personality defines the response patterns of an individual to the environment, it is also the environment that reciprocally sculptures the personality itself in the first place. Although personality is often considered an established property associated with an individual, the revelation here is that this established property is an implicitly fabricated one, and can be more volatile than most would intuitively believe.