While reading Juan Jose Saer’s The Whitness, I noticed that, throughout the story, Saer closely links language and identity. The protagonist struggles to form a personal or cultural identity from early on in the novel and thus clings to prescribed cultural labels depending on where he is. At first, he is merely “the orphan,” then he becomes “the cabin boy,” then “def-ghi,” and finally stops assigning himself labels when he returns back to western culture after he is found in the canoe. For me, he sees language as a critical aspect of personal and cultural identity, and tries to use language to cultivate a sense of personal identity. For example, when he relearns his native language, he says that he “felt the rhythm of it in [his] veins” (101), implying that this language is biologically a part of him and his identity. When describing the Indian’s language, however, he claims, “their life and the language they spoke tasted to me of the planet itself…a taste, they say, of ashes.” Here, the language is an external element that he must taste and ingest in order to make a part of him. The fact that it tastes like ashes implies that it is difficult to swallow and unnatural to eat. In short, it is not an inherent aspect of who he is. Thus, I think that he stops using these labels and language markers to identify himself because he realizes that he does not like or agree with the culture embedded within him from his native language and would rather remain without an identity than partake in a cultural identity that he does not agree with.