Volume 3, Issue 5, May 2022
Harrison V. Perry
Pages 23-42
The Big, Immovable I
What makes you, you? Why does your mind inhabit your body, instead of that of someone else? In this work of philosophical short story fiction about the mind, and ideas of self, Zach goes to visit his sister, Daphne, who has been incarcerated in a mental hospital. Her mental break came from her obsession with trying to solve the answer to her question, “Why am I, I?” She is obsessed with solving this problem and it has caused her to lose her grip on reality. Zach, her brother, is struggling at work, drinking too much, and also getting confused about the shifting world around him. Drunk, he gets angry at his family members of mental health patients support group and is picked up by the police. While sitting in the jail cell, sobering up, he shares a cell, and a conversation with a philosopher, who is particularly sympathetic to his/ Daphne’s questions about identity and self. It is only during their conversation that Zach begins to suspect he is Daphanie, and that he isn’t in a jail cell at all, but the mental hospital.