“Identity is a bag and a gag. Yet it exists for me with all the force of a fatal disease. Obviously I am here, a mind and a body... the solution of being a writer with solid (touchable, tearable, burnable) books is as close as anyone has come to a perfect answer” (Judith Rossner). Identity is very much a concept that is more than just a simple way to describe or differentiate one person from others. Identity is something that one creates for themselves through their lives in many ways. In Lauren Oliver’s Pandemonium, the second book to the Delirium series, Lena Holoway is presented as a protagonist that holds many contributing factors to what has created her true identity; Lena holds characteristics including her ability to make significant…show more content… Lena makes her first major and significant decision of the continued story by, while crossing the barrier of the Wilds and the valid land, deciding to keep going further into the Wilds, despite her pain, in order to escape her old life and the paranoia of Amor Deliria Nervosa. “A bullet has skimmed me on the side... I’m lucky though. The wound is shallow, but seeing all the blood, the missing skin, makes everything real: this new place, this monstrous, massive growth everywhere, what has happened, what I have left. What has been taken from me” (Oliver 5). As Lena was escaping her life with Alex, her dear partner in crime, he was taken down in order for her to make it. All of the new found realness caused by her pain has allowed her to reflect on the identity that she had left behind. Lena could then begin shedding her old identity of a valid who was okay with the corruption of the disease; a citizen willing to be partnered for marriage and one who was willing to get the procedure to remove her capacity to love.”That is the girl I was then: stumbling, sinking, lost in brightness and space. My past had been wiped clean, bleached a stark and spotless white” ( Oliver 47). The protagonist had allowed herself to lose who she once was, in order to create a new identity that would be in favor of her independence from the disease. Throughout many big events in life, people decide that it would be of their best interests to change who they are, whether it be for the better or the worse. “The DFA is the magic word: Deliria-Free America. Open sesame. She is all kindness now... ‘I understand.’ I duck my head and look penitent. The new Lena is a good actress” (Oliver 49). Lena had changed to her new self from the old Lena in order to benefit herself and her cause. The decisions made in life are not the only factors used for one to