Marjane Satrapi’s father‘s loaded statement about how “politics and sentiment don’t mix” isn’t necessarily false, but I believe Satrapi thinks that this statement is more complicated than a simple “agree or disagree” matter. We are all aware that emotions and snap judgments can lead people to do things that are regrettable and dangerous, but also without the awareness of human emotions and sentiment, brutality and a lack of compassion emerges. However, as seen both here in this story and across history, political matters have been left to decision by green and self-interest, not by compassion and sentiment. This, I believe, is why Satrapi chose to write Persepolis, to merge to two so that we can see with our own eyes (literally, it is a graphic novel after all) what a lack of sentimentality does to a country, a family, and to one little girl.
The guardians of the revolution act out of their own self interest to kill and maim anyone they see fit. There is even a moment in the book where Satrapi’s father successfully bribes them with money so that they will not search his house for contraband. So these men are not acting out of religious ideology, but instead to feed their power hungry and greedy personalities. Many governments have acted in this way as well. Laws are always being passed and enacted that supposedly help the population while hurting the individual. In Iran, and in Persepolis, the government regulates people so that decency and religious morals can be upheld, this includes imprisoning and executing people who differ from what is deemed immoral. It is important to point out who is behind the revolution and who is gaining from it. In the film, we saw a scene in which Satrapi stands up during an assemble at the university to point out to her supervisors that women are constantly being suppressed in the name of decency, but men however are not subject to a dress code. We can see clearly here the hypocrisy in the rules and how the rules don’t seem to be interested in religious morals but only in making men feel empowered.
Satrapi wants us to look at our politics with an eye for humanity. After the terrorist attacks occurred, there was a great amount of anti-Middle Eastern thought throughout America. Many people sought justice and hastily proclaimed that anything Middle Eastern was to be deemed terrorist or evil, and this lead us to labeling an entire region as an enemy, or “Axis of Evil”. Satrapi uses this book to remind us that the terrorist, the region, the government, and the people are entirely different things, and we should not resort to simply lumping them all together. The story of growing up, while radically different from my own, was completely relatable. She was a child, just like we all were at one point, and when we make the decision to drop another bomb or fire another weapon, it affects her. So while it is easy to think of her, her parents, her neighbors, and her friends as blood-thirsty, anti-American, murders, it is much, much more difficult to accept the reality that she is a kid who likes to dress up, spend nights with her grandmother, listen to synthesized 80’s music, and hang out with her friends on lazy afternoons. Satrapi promotes understanding and hopes that one day that will be our foreign policy. We should strive to connect sentiment and politics in order to connect with our humanity.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Great Gatsby Post
Towards the end of the book, I began to realize that Nick, who in every other novel would have been the main character of the story, did not seem to be the main focus of The Great Gatsby. We were essentially hearing the story of Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and their upper-class shenanigans through Nick, and not Nick’s actual story. This revelation came to me during the hotel room scene where Tom confronts Gatsby and Daisy about their affair. After the climax of the event has taken place and things seem to calm down for a moment, Nick suddenly realizes that it was his birthday. Something he would have probably noticed much sooner, had be not been entangled with other people’s affaires. There is a very small portion of the novel devoted to Nick, except of the very beginning and a few moments between him and Jordan (a love story that is tossed aside to make room for the more scandalous story of Gatsby). We, as the readers, don’t even get a clear picture of Nick as a character. While other characters, like Gatsby and Tom, have various characteristics pointed out to us, Nick’s characteristics remain a mystery to us. This is most likely due to the fact that this is a first person narrative, but could also relate to the theme of the novel.
The Great Gatsby is known to be a story that encapsulates the lust for spectacle that overtook America in the 1920’s. Gatsby’s parties drew upper class people out of their expensive houses to dance, socialize, and hopefully have some outrageous story to tell the next morning. When they didn’t have those stories to tell, they had rumors, much like the ones that followed the mysterious Gatsby around. Nick becomes our eye into their world, showing us how one can lose himself in the fast passed world illustrated. In fact, as the book opens, and before Nick meets the subjects of his story, he tells us of his past, and this is the only insight we are given into Nick. Once he comes into contact with the other characters, he is immediately lost in their lives. He pursues their stories so much that he disregards the other happenings of his life. When time elapses between confrontations with these other characters, Nick simply skips them and lets us know that we are now several months into the future without any tales of in between.
At the end of the novel, I do think Nick is taking hold of his life once again. First there is the sobering accident in which Myrtle is killed, and Nick sees that Gatsby and the others have also lost themselves in some form or fashion. Gatsby gives his life over to the dream that him and Daisy will be together, Daisy has receded back into her marriage where she can be safe from all the trouble of the outside world, and Tom has hidden under his masculine persona to rid himself of guilt for what he put the people around him through. Nick then breaks ties with the people that he’s met, most notably Jordan Baker. This comes with a line from Nick where he tells Jordan that is too old to lie to himself, signaling his growth from the beginning of the novel. He is now too old to play with dreams and desires of his youth, especially now that he sees the danger in living childishly. Right before Nick leaves West Egg, he walks up to Gatsby’s stairs and erases a vulgar word that a child has etched. This is Nick trying to clean Gatsby’s name. For a man that did so much in his life, Nick knows that the final days he lived should not be what he is remembered by. The story has shown Nick that the entanglement in the lives of others come with the price of your own story. He leaves all of this behind to create his own story and not simply be a part of somebody else’s.
The Great Gatsby is known to be a story that encapsulates the lust for spectacle that overtook America in the 1920’s. Gatsby’s parties drew upper class people out of their expensive houses to dance, socialize, and hopefully have some outrageous story to tell the next morning. When they didn’t have those stories to tell, they had rumors, much like the ones that followed the mysterious Gatsby around. Nick becomes our eye into their world, showing us how one can lose himself in the fast passed world illustrated. In fact, as the book opens, and before Nick meets the subjects of his story, he tells us of his past, and this is the only insight we are given into Nick. Once he comes into contact with the other characters, he is immediately lost in their lives. He pursues their stories so much that he disregards the other happenings of his life. When time elapses between confrontations with these other characters, Nick simply skips them and lets us know that we are now several months into the future without any tales of in between.
At the end of the novel, I do think Nick is taking hold of his life once again. First there is the sobering accident in which Myrtle is killed, and Nick sees that Gatsby and the others have also lost themselves in some form or fashion. Gatsby gives his life over to the dream that him and Daisy will be together, Daisy has receded back into her marriage where she can be safe from all the trouble of the outside world, and Tom has hidden under his masculine persona to rid himself of guilt for what he put the people around him through. Nick then breaks ties with the people that he’s met, most notably Jordan Baker. This comes with a line from Nick where he tells Jordan that is too old to lie to himself, signaling his growth from the beginning of the novel. He is now too old to play with dreams and desires of his youth, especially now that he sees the danger in living childishly. Right before Nick leaves West Egg, he walks up to Gatsby’s stairs and erases a vulgar word that a child has etched. This is Nick trying to clean Gatsby’s name. For a man that did so much in his life, Nick knows that the final days he lived should not be what he is remembered by. The story has shown Nick that the entanglement in the lives of others come with the price of your own story. He leaves all of this behind to create his own story and not simply be a part of somebody else’s.
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