Skip to main content

Marjane's Adaptation to New Cultures

Since in Persepolis Marjane is in Austria, she has to adapt to a new and unfamiliar culture. This includes her peers engaging in casual sex, smoking marijuana and cigarettes and shooting heroin, and generally disrespecting rules of religion and tradition that are so fundamental in Iran. She initially has a hard time adapting, because she learns that being able to simply speak the language is not enough to fully immerse herself.

But even beyond this, she also is struggling with issues that teenagers have to deal with on a regular basis in almost all parts of the world, such as not feeling loved, connecting with her teachers, and listening to parents and figures of authority. All of these things make it the largest struggle in her life thus far, even more than having to deal with routine airstrikes and war erupting al around her. However, the experience will likely turn out to improve her life. The experience of clashing with another culture and immersing yourself within it, while scary at times, is incredible.

Comments

  1. AndrewSeptember 29, 2017 at 10:02 AM

    Why do you think that these issues in Austria were the largest struggles of her life. I feel like she struggled more with having to leave her country and seeing it being bombed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. HunterOctober 1, 2017 at 7:23 PM

    Past eventually having a good understanding of multiple cultures, would you say there are any ways in which this new culture has already improved her life?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Use of Formulaic Language in the Odyssey

Because the Odyssey  was written circa. 800 B.C.E, it obviously wasn't meant to be read by a bunch of high-schoolers at a Montessori school in 2016 Houston, Texas. It, gathered from research by linguists, archaeologists, and historians, was almost certainly meant to be performed. I don't think anybody has mentioned that only the major or supporting characters in the Odyssey are given epithets (ie. "Owl-eyed Athena, godly Nestor, Red-haired Menelaus "), and there is quite a lot of supporting characters for a relatively short epic compared to the length of fantasy & epic literature today. Because of this, these epithets were not only used for rhythm and splendor when performing. In fact, some were likely put there to remind the audience members of characters that haven't been seen in a while. However, for the characters like Zeus, Poseidon, and Athena who appear often, the performance explanation seems to be the greatest. However, another possible reason is ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sound Devices in "We Real Cool"

THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. We Real Cool" is a great piece of literature. It doesn't take more than fifteen seconds to read, and yet I found it to be one of the most interesting poems I have come across, not only for its surprisingly deep meaning, but also for it's enjoyable and catchy use of sound devices. Some uses of sound devices in the poem are obvious. For example, the two sentences in each stanza (not counting the use of enjambment with the word "we", which, by the way, is an interesting visual choice) produce a couplet, as they rhyme. However, looking deeper into the poem, we start to see more hidden devices, such as the consecutive rhyme "we thin gin" and the fact that on the first and second lines of the second and and the first line of the fourth stanza, al...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Were Frederick Douglass's Human Rights Violated?

A human right is any such right that is guaranteed to each and every human regardless of creed, class, color, race, gender, or sexuality upon birth. However, to say that because every human is guaranteed these rights that these rights are untouched is a falsity. Today, human rights are constantly violated every day, and it was no different in Douglass's time. In Chapter 10, on page 35 of the novel, Douglass describes how we was sent by his then-master, Mr. Covey, to gather a load of wood using a wooden cart and two oxen. Covey tells Douglass to hold on tight when the oxen begin running. In no fault of his own, Douglass is dragged at an immense speed by the oxen, who crash the cart into rocks and trees. When Mr. Covey learns of this, Douglass is then brutally whipped, even though he had no prior experience with oxen and this particular exercise. Beyond slavery itself violating an essential human right, Douglass describes the numerous times when he is beaten, occasionally to life-t...
Post a Comment
Read more