Tailor-made Identities: Problem Illustrated with the Example of Stories of Selected Literary Characters Based on the Liquid Modernity Concept by Zygmunt Bauman

Abstract

Referring to the concepts of liquid modernity by Bauman, in the text I will analyze the stories of selected characters of children’s and teenagers’ contemporary books who had to face the problems of happiness, consumption, responsibility and crisis of identity. To contrast the issue of getting rid of one’s “self” in the contemporary culture, I analyze the attitudes of literary characters immersed in the war reality, i.e., in the time when it was really “hectic” and when hiding one’s identity was absolutely necessary to survive.