For my Last Journal I decided to do a research paper on both Billy Collins and Mary Oliver. Since I was at my College orientation on Friday and didn't learn how to write poetry, I decided it would be best to do research rather then attempt writing in a style I don't understand.
Here are the sites I used for research:
http://project1.caryacademy.org/echoes/03-04/Billy_Collins/Defaultcollins.htm
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Billy-Collins
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/278
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/265
http://www.maryoliver.net/biography.html
Collins
William (Billy) Collins was born March 22, 1941 in New York City. All his life he has shown proficiency towardswriting, "From day one, his talents as a writer shined through, as he was able to express his thoughts on paper well throughout grade school" (Khoury). In his lifetime he has received fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and The Guggenheim Foundation. Collin's most well known book is The Best Cigarette, to which he has recorded all thirty-three poems, and released the recording in 1997. He has won a plethora of awards, some of which include; Poetry Magazine's "Poet of the Year" in 1994, Literary Lion of the New York Public Library, and New York State Poet for 2004. His single greatest award was in 2001, when he was named the United States Poet Laureate. Billy Collins is alive today, living in Somers, New York, and a professor at Lehman College. He has also taught at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College. Collins has produced seven published books of poetry; Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Picnic Lightning, The Best Cigarette, The Art of Drowning, Questions About Angels, and The Apple that Astonished Paris.
Oliver
Mary Oliver was born in Maple Heights, Ohio, on September 10, 1935. Oliver never graduated from college, "Oliver attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College" (poets.org). Despite having never earned a college diploma in writing, she has had great sucess. Her first poetry book, "No Voyage, and Other Poems, was published in 1963," (poets.org) and has since published many others. Her repertoire includes; Thirst (2006), Why I Wake Early (2004), Owls and Other Fantasies : Poems and Essays (2003), Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems (1999), West Wind (1997), and White Pine (1994). Oliver's poems tend to shape themselves around the beauty and complexity of nature, and have won her many awards. Her book, New and Selected Poems (1992) won the National Book award. House of Light (1990) won the Christopher Award, and American Primitive (1983) earned Oliver the Pulitzer Prize as well. Not only is Mary Oliver a poet, but she is quite a professional vocalist as well; "Mary Oliver has been writing and performing for twenty-five years" (MaryOliver.net). Mary Oliver is also still alive today, and resides in her house in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she continues to create works of poetic fiction.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Poetry Close Analysis
Mary Oliver's Happiness
For my class discussion poem, I chose Happiness, from Mary Oliver's American Primative. To me, a person who does not have to find hidden "powerful" meaning in each poem, I thought it was just about a bear on her quest to obtain honey, or her quest for happiness. but through classroom discussion, I learned that others felt it was both a spiritual quest for religion, as well as a sexual encounter between two women.
I saw Happiness as just a "she-bear"'s quest for honey; the poem details 'I' whom I assumed to be Mary Oliver, watching a bear in the afternoon. At first the poem seems to have negative meanings, as Oliver details the "Black block of gloom" whilst the bear searches in many trees for honey. Once she obtains her honey, she consumes it's sweetness until "maybe she grew full, or sleepy, or maybe a little drunk." After the bear is full and 'happy', she is described as an enormous bee, "all sweetness and wings" and Oliver describes roses and flowers in a happy tone.
The first point brought up in discussion that suprised me was the poem's sexual connotations. Most of Mary Oliver's poems seem to have sexual innuendos wrapped in them somewhere, I learned after our discussions. After some discussion, Anders brought up the point that this poem's diction seems to describe the sexual portions in a female form. "She lipped and toungued and scooped out in her black nails," is one of the main sexual phrases. Describing the honeycombs as "the tree's soft caves," in freudian theology, implies that the trees are female. The interactions between the she-bear and the female trees, the poem seems to take not only a sexual side, but a lesbian side as well.
Lyndsey Guthrey brought up an idea in discussion that did not provoke much discussion, but I found it very thought-provoking. To her the poem described a spiritual quest to find religion, and the happiness truly finding it brings. This meant a lot to me, as I aslo felt the poem was about a quest. So I re-read the poem, realating it to religion. The beginning of the poem starts with the "bear", or person, in a "black block of gloom," until she found it in the deep in the woods. Upon it's discovery, she "dipped into it among the swarming bees," immersing herself in the religion she has chosen. When she is 'full'y submerged in the religion, she acts as a bee, which I saw as an angel, and "let go of the branches...all sweetness and wings." The she-bear does the leap-of-faith and falling from the tree, ascends into heaven.
I originally enjoyed this poem because I thought it was simple, but through discussion I learned that it was just as deep, if not more so, as most of Mary Oliver's poems in American Primative. Poetry is a form of literature that can read many ways, and for different readers those ways can be entirely different.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Poetry Response Journal
Poetry is something that has proved to be very difficult for me to read. My complete ignorance towards poems was proven to me as I read the first few pages of Mary Oliver's American Primitive, and was surprised that it didn't rhyme at all. I knew poetry didn't have to rhyme every line, but I thought each paragraph was supposed to have some rhyming theme or something. These two books started off as very slow reads for me, with random pauses as the poems jumped lines for seemingly no reason, but as I progressed through them I suppressed my original negativity for poetry and let the words on the page float deeper into my mind.
I will admit that I haven't yet had time to finish the last 20 or so pages of Billy Collins' Picnic, Lighting, though I plan on reading them tomorrow morning in school. I have read more than enough to notice the similarities, as well as the polar opposites, between these two poet's writings.
Billy Collins' poems are for the most part longer than Mary Oliver's, but they typically have deeper meaning as well. In "Victoria's Secret", for example, Collins goes further than just describing himself paging through a catalog, he vividly describes the unhappiness of the models exposed to any and all curious eyes. Collins' writing had the effects of a deeper understanding in some poems, as well as a deeper confusion in others. I really enjoyed reading "What I learned today", where he describes his thinking process as he reads through a single page of an encyclopedia. "I Go Back to the House for a Book" was another interesting poem of Billy Collins that I personally found both very interesting and very confusing. He explains how by changing what he was doing he has split himself into two; the man who chose to grab his book, and "another me that did not bother to go back to the house for a book" (Collins 39). Throughout this poem Collins details his feelings on this person always being just in front of him, and the paradox of him not existing at all simultaneously.
Mary Oliver's poems were much shorter and quicker to read. While Collins' poems seemed to focus on himself and other people and their interactions and reactions with life, Oliver's writing seemed to wrap itself around the beauty (or ugliness) of nature and the animals living in nature. She has many poems about ponds, or beautiful sunrises in the morning, but she also incorporates grotesque imagery of a crow's "wings crumbling like old bark. Feather's falling from your breast like leaves, and your eyes two bolts of lightning gone to sleep" (Oliver 9). For me personally the contrast she uses between different poems, or even in the same poems, has the effect of making me more connected to the text, and I felt like I had a deeper understanding of them. One poem I enjoyed reading entitled "John Chapman", was about a man whom, "Everywhere he went the apple trees sprang up behind him lovely as young girls" (24). Is this Johnny Appleseed from old legends? Why does she call him John Chapman? Another poem is called Chapp's lake, so I'm wondering if the name Chap has some significance to Oliver unknown to me?
After reading these two poem books, I've realized poetry isn't as bad as I thought. I'm not about to go and buy a bunch of poem books necessarily, but I have a better understanding of them now and can appreciate the complexity of them. Some of the poems were confusing and/or boring for me, but quite a few I found to be shockingly interesting. They had vivid imagery describing nature, as well as deeper meanings that go far beyond what is on the pages. Unfortunately, most of my favorite poems that I wanted to keep reading are the shortest, and end abruptly. Overall though, my poetry reading experience turned out much better than I had first expected.
I will admit that I haven't yet had time to finish the last 20 or so pages of Billy Collins' Picnic, Lighting, though I plan on reading them tomorrow morning in school. I have read more than enough to notice the similarities, as well as the polar opposites, between these two poet's writings.
Billy Collins' poems are for the most part longer than Mary Oliver's, but they typically have deeper meaning as well. In "Victoria's Secret", for example, Collins goes further than just describing himself paging through a catalog, he vividly describes the unhappiness of the models exposed to any and all curious eyes. Collins' writing had the effects of a deeper understanding in some poems, as well as a deeper confusion in others. I really enjoyed reading "What I learned today", where he describes his thinking process as he reads through a single page of an encyclopedia. "I Go Back to the House for a Book" was another interesting poem of Billy Collins that I personally found both very interesting and very confusing. He explains how by changing what he was doing he has split himself into two; the man who chose to grab his book, and "another me that did not bother to go back to the house for a book" (Collins 39). Throughout this poem Collins details his feelings on this person always being just in front of him, and the paradox of him not existing at all simultaneously.
Mary Oliver's poems were much shorter and quicker to read. While Collins' poems seemed to focus on himself and other people and their interactions and reactions with life, Oliver's writing seemed to wrap itself around the beauty (or ugliness) of nature and the animals living in nature. She has many poems about ponds, or beautiful sunrises in the morning, but she also incorporates grotesque imagery of a crow's "wings crumbling like old bark. Feather's falling from your breast like leaves, and your eyes two bolts of lightning gone to sleep" (Oliver 9). For me personally the contrast she uses between different poems, or even in the same poems, has the effect of making me more connected to the text, and I felt like I had a deeper understanding of them. One poem I enjoyed reading entitled "John Chapman", was about a man whom, "Everywhere he went the apple trees sprang up behind him lovely as young girls" (24). Is this Johnny Appleseed from old legends? Why does she call him John Chapman? Another poem is called Chapp's lake, so I'm wondering if the name Chap has some significance to Oliver unknown to me?
After reading these two poem books, I've realized poetry isn't as bad as I thought. I'm not about to go and buy a bunch of poem books necessarily, but I have a better understanding of them now and can appreciate the complexity of them. Some of the poems were confusing and/or boring for me, but quite a few I found to be shockingly interesting. They had vivid imagery describing nature, as well as deeper meanings that go far beyond what is on the pages. Unfortunately, most of my favorite poems that I wanted to keep reading are the shortest, and end abruptly. Overall though, my poetry reading experience turned out much better than I had first expected.
Friday, May 18, 2007
The Sorrow Of War: Extended Journal
For my extended journal I decided to make a poster containing much of the slang and Jargon used by Vietnamese Soldiers as well as Americans. I stumbled accross a "Vietnam War Dictionary" while looking for sources for my Literary Analysis, so it didn't take me long to figure out what I wanted to do. I searched google.com and found a few sites to take definitions from. To pick what words to use and design the poster took about two hours. I found this really interesting especially what opposing sides nicknamed ranks/positions and weapons.
Here are the websites I picked my terms from:
http://www.ktroop.com/language.htm
http://www.imnahastamps.com/military/militaryterms.htm
http://www.vietnamgear.com/glossary.aspx
http://www.angelfire.com/mn/nathanlee/vietnam_dictionary.html
Here are the websites I picked my terms from:
http://www.ktroop.com/language.htm
http://www.imnahastamps.com/military/militaryterms.htm
http://www.vietnamgear.com/glossary.aspx
http://www.angelfire.com/mn/nathanlee/vietnam_dictionary.html
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Persepolis: Creative Extended Journal
Persepolis 1.5: The Story of a Plane flight
For my extended journal on Persepolis I wanted to make something creative. Since I also read Persepolis 2, I know that Marji had a hard time adjusting to all the different cultural beliefs and sexuality differences. So I decided to make a comic strip of her plane flight to Austria. The goal of the comic is to get the point across that although Marji was striped of the majority of her childhood innocence at an early age, she is still only fourteen, and has a lot to learn about life outside of the oppressive Iranian regime.
It took me approximately an hour to come up with the idea for this journal and write out a basic script with the details I wanted to include. I am just beginning the process of drawing my comic, and due to my lack of artistic skill, I expect it to take another two or three hours to finish. I don't think it's possible to post it here, and I wasn't planning on presenting it in class, so if anyone is interested in looking at it (or Persepolis 2 for that matter) just let me know and I'll show it to you.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
The Sorrow Of War: Reader's Response
The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam by Bao Ninh is a immensely descriptive novel of a Soldier's struggles after spending ten years serving his country during the Vietnam War. The story starts very slowly, with main character Kien in a "Missing in Action Remains-Gathering Team"(3). I was pretty bored for about the first thirty pages of the novel, as his team, consisting of only him and one other person, driving around collecting the long-dead remains of the dead soldiers after the war. Kien starts hallucinating and thinks he sees and hears "Screaming Souls"(7). Scattered in the forest and remaining in the bodies he collects. He sleeps in the back of the truck, in a hammock above the dead bodies. It's no surprise why he gets frequent nightmares, why would he want to sleep above all those bodies? The next thirty to fifty pages detail his hallucinations and bring him to the home of an old acquaintance, who although dead, has a daughter named Lan that vividly remembers him, and the two reminisce on the horrors of the war. Lan wants Kien to stay with her and live out his days, but he knows he must finish this job so he can go back to his hometown.
Finally, on page 56 the true plot line of the story shines through. "When starting this novel, the first in his life, he planned a postwar plot...but relentlessly, his pen disobeyed him. Each page revived one story of death after another and gradually the stories swirled back deep into the primitive jungles of war" (57). This entire book is about the struggle for Kien to write his novel, and how he struggles so painfully with Post-Traumatic Stress. Throughout his book he deals with both the sorrows of war and the sorrows of love.
In his sections detailing the sorrow of war, Ninh's writing resembles Tim O'Brien in that the stories pull you in and make you believe they are real, when there in reality may be little or no truth to the story. As Kien recalls his painful memories of war, they take shape on his random writings. "The sorrows of war and his nostalgia drove him down into the depths of his imagination. From there his writing could take substance" (173). For Kien to be able to write about his experiences, he had to get drunk and write only at night. This is so strange, how is it that he can only write while in an intoxicated tired state of mind? My guess is that it has to do with his conditions in war and being drunk and alone in the dark was the closest post-war way to relive his experiences. "What remained was sorrow, the immense sorrow, the sorrow of having survived. The sorrow of war" (192). As he writes his stories I couldn't help but feel sorry for him; he struggles so much but there is no one there to help him.
As a child, Kien had a lover whom he spent most of his time with. Her name is Phuong, and she is a beautiful young girl. But as the story progresses and Kien must go to war, they realize that their "eternal love" was anything but that. When he returns from the war he finds that his love is sleeping around with other people to fulfill her material needs. She tells Kien that times have changed, and they were never meant for each other. I think this is so sad because they seemed like the perfect couple as children and now, because of what war has done to them, they will never be happy together. Their last conversation before Phuong leaves for good shows how much passion they had had for each other, "'Are you in love?' he said. 'I loved you and only you, Kien. I never loved anyone else. And you?' she asked. 'I still love you,' he replied" (146). This really got me attached to the two lovers who were once so close to each other. Because of what war does to a soldier's heart, "The sorrow of war inside a soldier's heart was in a strange way similar to the sorrow of love....It was a sadness, a missing, a pain which could send one soaring back into the past" (94). If only their love hadn't ended so tragically they could have lived out a happy life together and started a family.
At the end of Sorrow of War Bao Ninh states that he had received all of the manuscripts of Kien's writings from his mute neighbor one day. This really shocked me because the whole time I thought that Kien's stories of war and his struggles with his novel were actually Ninh's struggles, only told in third person so, as Tim O'Brien would put it, "To objectify himself to the experience." I really enjoyed reading this novel. At first it was hard to read with overly long descriptions of the screaming souls and the ghosts Kien saw, but as the story developed and I grew attached to the character of Kien, I really started to enjoy the novel. It was very sad how far Kien had fallen in his life from where he was, and all of the vivid details helped me visualize what it was like for Kien to have to serve in the Vietnam war. This book opened up my eyes to a new perspective of the war; the men I used to consider to be the "bad guys" suffered equally as much if not more than any American "hero" fighting in the same battle.
Finally, on page 56 the true plot line of the story shines through. "When starting this novel, the first in his life, he planned a postwar plot...but relentlessly, his pen disobeyed him. Each page revived one story of death after another and gradually the stories swirled back deep into the primitive jungles of war" (57). This entire book is about the struggle for Kien to write his novel, and how he struggles so painfully with Post-Traumatic Stress. Throughout his book he deals with both the sorrows of war and the sorrows of love.
In his sections detailing the sorrow of war, Ninh's writing resembles Tim O'Brien in that the stories pull you in and make you believe they are real, when there in reality may be little or no truth to the story. As Kien recalls his painful memories of war, they take shape on his random writings. "The sorrows of war and his nostalgia drove him down into the depths of his imagination. From there his writing could take substance" (173). For Kien to be able to write about his experiences, he had to get drunk and write only at night. This is so strange, how is it that he can only write while in an intoxicated tired state of mind? My guess is that it has to do with his conditions in war and being drunk and alone in the dark was the closest post-war way to relive his experiences. "What remained was sorrow, the immense sorrow, the sorrow of having survived. The sorrow of war" (192). As he writes his stories I couldn't help but feel sorry for him; he struggles so much but there is no one there to help him.
As a child, Kien had a lover whom he spent most of his time with. Her name is Phuong, and she is a beautiful young girl. But as the story progresses and Kien must go to war, they realize that their "eternal love" was anything but that. When he returns from the war he finds that his love is sleeping around with other people to fulfill her material needs. She tells Kien that times have changed, and they were never meant for each other. I think this is so sad because they seemed like the perfect couple as children and now, because of what war has done to them, they will never be happy together. Their last conversation before Phuong leaves for good shows how much passion they had had for each other, "'Are you in love?' he said. 'I loved you and only you, Kien. I never loved anyone else. And you?' she asked. 'I still love you,' he replied" (146). This really got me attached to the two lovers who were once so close to each other. Because of what war does to a soldier's heart, "The sorrow of war inside a soldier's heart was in a strange way similar to the sorrow of love....It was a sadness, a missing, a pain which could send one soaring back into the past" (94). If only their love hadn't ended so tragically they could have lived out a happy life together and started a family.
At the end of Sorrow of War Bao Ninh states that he had received all of the manuscripts of Kien's writings from his mute neighbor one day. This really shocked me because the whole time I thought that Kien's stories of war and his struggles with his novel were actually Ninh's struggles, only told in third person so, as Tim O'Brien would put it, "To objectify himself to the experience." I really enjoyed reading this novel. At first it was hard to read with overly long descriptions of the screaming souls and the ghosts Kien saw, but as the story developed and I grew attached to the character of Kien, I really started to enjoy the novel. It was very sad how far Kien had fallen in his life from where he was, and all of the vivid details helped me visualize what it was like for Kien to have to serve in the Vietnam war. This book opened up my eyes to a new perspective of the war; the men I used to consider to be the "bad guys" suffered equally as much if not more than any American "hero" fighting in the same battle.
Persepolis: Close Analysis
"The Revolution is like a bicycle. When the wheels don't turn, it falls. And so went the revolution in my country" (10).
Persepolis: The Story of a childhood by Marjane Satrapi is a book based on Satrapi's own childhood while growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Cultural Revolution in 1980, as well as a plethora of other revolutions in the early years of her life. Throughout Persepolis Marjane writes about the revolutions and how they always fail. She compares the revolutions to a bicycle to show how a revolution needs full support of the population to succeed.
Satrapi's message throughout the book is very simple to understand; without full support of an entire group, a revolution will never succeed. The entire population needs to be behind a single cause if it is to overpower the current system and start something new. This was such a problem in Iran during Marji's childhood, because for every revolution there were people in favor of revolution, and those who would rather keep everything the way it is. During the first cultural revolution in 1980, "The year it became obligatory to wear the veil at school" (3). Right from the start of this revolution, the people were divided over this act of covering a woman's hair. "Everywhere on the streets there were demonstrations for and against the veil" (5). Another example of a disunited people was when the war had started in Iran against Iraq.
"There were two kinds of women. The fundamentalist woman. The Modern women. You showed your opposition to the regime by letting a few strands of hair show. There were also two sorts of men. The Fundamentalist Man: beard, shirt hanging out. The Progressive Man: shaved, with out without mustache, shirt tucked in. Islam is more or against shaving" (75).
Even when the country needed the full support of the population, people still decided to rebel against the common ideals of Iran and the Islamic religion.
Although the revolutions never achieved the unity necessary to succeed, they did make many attempts to sway the population. One such example was when Marji's Father was taking photos of the revolutionaries turning dead victims into Martyrs. Her father explained what he saw, "People came out carrying the body of a young man killed by the army. He was honored like a martyr. A crowd gathered to take him to the Baheshte Zahra cemetery" (31). They tried to rally support by raising these victims to martyr status and persuading the people. Also on page 31-32, they take the body of a man who died of cancer, and not only do they blame his death on their King but they persuade his wife to protest with them.
The government also made attempts to unify the people. Since regular actions did not come close to swaying the people, they had to start taking extreme actions. When girls were walking around alone, they were confronted by men or women who tried to scare them into following the new laws of the revolution. This was especially true for those who weren’t wearing the veil properly or even at all. These men used force and foul language to scare the women, Marji’s mother Ebi told her story to Marji and her father, “Two fundamentalist bastards…they insulted me. They said that women like me should be pushed up against a wall and fucked. And then thrown in the garbage” (74). This was very hard for many women to deal with. Another form of intimidation tactic were fundamentalist women who walked around and punished young girls for breaking the rules. Marji explains the experience when she was yelled at by these women, “Their job was to put us back on the straight and narrow by explaining the duties of Muslim women. ‘Why are you wearing those ‘punk’ shoes? What punk shoes? Those! But these are sneakers! Shut up! They’re punk” (133). Even for something as unimportant as wearing the wrong shoes, the women in this book were forced to comply with the government’s beliefs for fear of bodily harm.
There were also others who didn't stand in a group to aid the revolution, but suffered alone, even giving up their lives for the cause of the revolution. On page 51 is shown the horrible torture of a man who will not confess the hiding place of his comrades and in the end, "they burned him with an iron" (51). Another example of someone who died for the revolution was Marji's uncle Anoosh, who was a supporter of the revolution. He was put into jail multiple times, and in the end was executed under the accusation of being a "Russian Spy" (70).
In Persepolis, there are many people who are both strongly in favor and strongly opposed to the revolutions taking place. With the many different reasons for each revolution to exist, it became very hard for any of them to attain enough popular support for their new ideal to become a reality. Marjane Satrapi wanted to show people how hard it was living in a world full of so much adversity, and that uniting under a common goal was as futile as trying to pedal a bike with wheels that don't turn. She does a great job of conveying this message throughout Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood.
Persepolis: The Story of a childhood by Marjane Satrapi is a book based on Satrapi's own childhood while growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Cultural Revolution in 1980, as well as a plethora of other revolutions in the early years of her life. Throughout Persepolis Marjane writes about the revolutions and how they always fail. She compares the revolutions to a bicycle to show how a revolution needs full support of the population to succeed.
Satrapi's message throughout the book is very simple to understand; without full support of an entire group, a revolution will never succeed. The entire population needs to be behind a single cause if it is to overpower the current system and start something new. This was such a problem in Iran during Marji's childhood, because for every revolution there were people in favor of revolution, and those who would rather keep everything the way it is. During the first cultural revolution in 1980, "The year it became obligatory to wear the veil at school" (3). Right from the start of this revolution, the people were divided over this act of covering a woman's hair. "Everywhere on the streets there were demonstrations for and against the veil" (5). Another example of a disunited people was when the war had started in Iran against Iraq.
"There were two kinds of women. The fundamentalist woman. The Modern women. You showed your opposition to the regime by letting a few strands of hair show. There were also two sorts of men. The Fundamentalist Man: beard, shirt hanging out. The Progressive Man: shaved, with out without mustache, shirt tucked in. Islam is more or against shaving" (75).
Even when the country needed the full support of the population, people still decided to rebel against the common ideals of Iran and the Islamic religion.
Although the revolutions never achieved the unity necessary to succeed, they did make many attempts to sway the population. One such example was when Marji's Father was taking photos of the revolutionaries turning dead victims into Martyrs. Her father explained what he saw, "People came out carrying the body of a young man killed by the army. He was honored like a martyr. A crowd gathered to take him to the Baheshte Zahra cemetery" (31). They tried to rally support by raising these victims to martyr status and persuading the people. Also on page 31-32, they take the body of a man who died of cancer, and not only do they blame his death on their King but they persuade his wife to protest with them.
The government also made attempts to unify the people. Since regular actions did not come close to swaying the people, they had to start taking extreme actions. When girls were walking around alone, they were confronted by men or women who tried to scare them into following the new laws of the revolution. This was especially true for those who weren’t wearing the veil properly or even at all. These men used force and foul language to scare the women, Marji’s mother Ebi told her story to Marji and her father, “Two fundamentalist bastards…they insulted me. They said that women like me should be pushed up against a wall and fucked. And then thrown in the garbage” (74). This was very hard for many women to deal with. Another form of intimidation tactic were fundamentalist women who walked around and punished young girls for breaking the rules. Marji explains the experience when she was yelled at by these women, “Their job was to put us back on the straight and narrow by explaining the duties of Muslim women. ‘Why are you wearing those ‘punk’ shoes? What punk shoes? Those! But these are sneakers! Shut up! They’re punk” (133). Even for something as unimportant as wearing the wrong shoes, the women in this book were forced to comply with the government’s beliefs for fear of bodily harm.
There were also others who didn't stand in a group to aid the revolution, but suffered alone, even giving up their lives for the cause of the revolution. On page 51 is shown the horrible torture of a man who will not confess the hiding place of his comrades and in the end, "they burned him with an iron" (51). Another example of someone who died for the revolution was Marji's uncle Anoosh, who was a supporter of the revolution. He was put into jail multiple times, and in the end was executed under the accusation of being a "Russian Spy" (70).
In Persepolis, there are many people who are both strongly in favor and strongly opposed to the revolutions taking place. With the many different reasons for each revolution to exist, it became very hard for any of them to attain enough popular support for their new ideal to become a reality. Marjane Satrapi wanted to show people how hard it was living in a world full of so much adversity, and that uniting under a common goal was as futile as trying to pedal a bike with wheels that don't turn. She does a great job of conveying this message throughout Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood.
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