This essay is based on exploration of Cynthia Marshall's The Shattering of the Self, as manifest in the aesthetic eminence, the veritable carnage and ecstasy, of Shakespeare's play Titus Andronicus. The gift of shattering resides in the way the issue of identity is framed in art.
Namely, that the legitimate ethical concern with one's moral edification, and fiction's role in that development, pales in comparison with our existential quest for pleasure and pain.