Ernesto Che Guevara--The Motorcycle Diaries

The movie motorcycle diaries was based on Che Guevara's diaries. He remains till today, an international symbol of freedom, a hero.

Che Guevara was born in 1928 in Argentina. He was of spanish and irish descent.

• suffered severely from asthma
• amazing athlete
• avid collective reader
• Machu Pichu played an important role in his life.

 His beliefs were influenced by some of the most important and influential figures of his time, as he read works by Kar Marx, William Falkner, Kafka and Vladimir Lenin.
He participated in many revolutions and ended up being Fidel Castro's right hand man in the Cuban revolution.

Motorcycle diaries is categorized as a bildungsroman. This implies that the author presents social, psychological, and moral shaping of the personality of a character, usually the protagonist. But Motorcycle diaries is often also associated with an identity plot where the protagonist comes to learn who they are and their identity.
An identity plot has five major elements:

• The narrative revolves around the question of how to define and understand a character's identity.
• The character must be a member of a minority within a larger society.
• The character is at odds with the minority group of which he or she is a part of.
• The character needs to be conflicted about his or her difference from the majority and about his or her difference from the minority. 
• Authenticity and origine are always at stake in the characters quest for personal identity. Even when they are absent, their absence alone signifies something crucial to the character's identity. 

Here are some variations of an identity plot:

• The characters seem to be a member of the majority group.
• The character does not seem to be conflicted about his membership in the minority group (will that person betray his group or not)
• The character resists the whole idea of having an identity that is stable (Kingston--she doesnt believe identities stay still--identity is changeable--the variation becomes more common in later 20 th century although clearly there are authors who believe that identity can be stable.)
• There may be multiple people who's identities are at stake in the novel
• can have variations of fiction based on fact (raises the stakes of the fiction--suggesting its purchase on the real to write a fiction that is sort of semi-autobiographical, not all truth--that what is going on in the fiction is close to what we live.)
• Identity is not based on race or ethnicity.