Preview

The Viel Sparknotes

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1596 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Viel Sparknotes
Who People Are
Are people what they love or what they are told to love? The Viel written by Marjane Satrapi asks this question in her comic strip based on her own life in Iran. During “The Islamic Revolution” in Iran in 1979 plenty of transformations took place (343). Differences happened in Iran that Satrapi did not feel comfortable with. Similarities hold between her life and that of many children in every land. Revisions happen in a child’s life that have no relationship with that child being content and nothing to do with what they love in life. Therefore, I feel that children often lose what they love being as a result of what they are made to believe because of people in power and the society those powerful people rule over.
Before 1980 Satrapi wore no …show more content…
These beliefs were not natural for her and her friends. It was a Cultural Revolution that created this change for her in Iran. This Cultural Revolution came from the heavy hands of adults who stated they wanted nothing other than to rid the Iranians of western influence. It was a strike against freedom of thought. It was a strike against being who she wanted to be. For a person to be told who they are and what they crave in life is wrong, is no different than that person being placed within a prison of their own mind.
Satrapi noticed the effects of this Cultural Revolution on her mother, who was photographed by a German journalist protesting to keep freedom in Iran. The photo made it into the European newspapers and one magazine in Iran. But instead of being praised for standing up for what she believed in, she was ridiculed into hiding her true self, similar to how the veil hid women’s individuality at that time (345). She was forced to be somebody else by people who seemed to believe they were helping their fellow Iranians to be free from the oppressive West and its capitalistic decadence (344).
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Persepolis: Major Phases That Happen In The Iranian Revolution
    • 666 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Persepolis: Major Phases That Happen In The Iranian Revolution

    In this book, Satrapi explains how she lived when she was a child. All the difficulties she went through during the revolutions and also how other people in her community struggled daily to live. A major problem Satrapi seemed to have a problem with was during the war when they had to wear veil and Satrapi didn’t like wearing the veil because she never understood the purpose of them wearing it. During this time, people of her society were often times forced to do things that they did not want to.…

    • 666 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Innocence In Marjane Satrapi's The Complete Persepolis
    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Innocence In Marjane Satrapi's The Complete Persepolis

    Satrapi often forgot about the good times and it drove her into a depression. She became the oppressed woman she would’ve been in Iran, but she became it while in Vienna. She still felt the weight of the war and her depression covered her in the black veil even though she was outside of Iran. Her knowledge of war lead her to become depressed, even when she was no longer being…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Taking A Look At Shirin Neshat
    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Taking A Look At Shirin Neshat

    In her Ted Talk titled “Art in Exile”, Shirin Neshat targets Western artists and warns them about appropriating cultures as a form of entertainment. Women of any geographical region who could understand the gender and cultural conflicts that were going on in Iran, Neshat targeted as an…

    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Lullabies For Little Criminals: A Cultural Analysis
    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Lullabies For Little Criminals: A Cultural Analysis

    You’ve probably seen the comparison, a woman in a bikini and sunglasses looking judgmentally at a woman in a burqa, who is looking back the same way. Both women are thinking, “What a cruel, male-dominated culture.”. The thoughts provoked by each site are the same, but for completely opposite reasons. The reasons are dictated by the perception the women’s cultures have given them. An individual’s culture has an immense influence on the way they see the world and people around them.…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Symbolism In Lolita
    • 286 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Symbolism In Lolita

    This same truth can be found in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita”. Like Gatsby, the protagonist, Humbert of the novel Lolita fantasizes of attaining another person and also succeeds. Humbert dreams of grasping and possessing his flawless Lolita who has no will and who can satisfy his sexual desires. The parallelism between these situations is that in Humbert’s quest of molding Lolita, she is completely destroyed, her innocence is snatched from her and so is her right to live. In the same way Tehran’s regime ends up damaging the country and most importantly Islam by utilizing it as an “instrument of oppression” thus wounding the country more profoundly than any other foreign country could have done. In each case, either a person or group of greater…

    • 286 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Dumas Moving To America Analysis
    • 373 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Dumas Moving To America Analysis

    In 1972 the Iranian family, the Dumas, had moved to America for a brief time. In this time young Firoozeh lived in Whittier, California and was attending a public school there. After her short stay there she could only remember the positives from her stay, but she could also remember how her ancestors were treated when they first immigrated to America. When the first wave of Islamics had moved to America, they were not treated the best. My perception of the Dumas tells me that they might have expected the same treatment when they had first thought of coming here but they quickly found otherwise. Not only were they treated fairly, but they were able to teach many people about their ways. She had talked to students at her school and they asked about common stereotypes and she had some funny answers.…

    • 373 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Lead Sparknotes
    • 672 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Lead Sparknotes

    The Lead is based on a true story, Antonio Banderas portrays Pierre DuLaine, a New York City dance instructor who gets the concept of teaching the beauty of ballroom dancing to a group of detention students in a troublesome inner-city Manhattan high school. Pierre Dulaine rides the streets dressed immaculate on his bicycle. One day, he observes a student named Rock (Rob Brown) striking a car with a golf club. Rock has his logics, but rather than calling the cops, Mr. Dulaine voluntarily takes leadership to help. Dulaine comes into the school the next day and communicate to the principal (Alfre Woodard) that he wants to interpret ballroom dancing to the detention class.…

    • 672 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Fantine Sparknotes
    • 412 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Fantine Sparknotes

    Jean Valjean is an ex-convict who leaves behind a life of hatred and deceit. He makes a fortune with innovative industrial techniques. Valjean finds happiness in loving his adopted daughter Cosette, and helping people who are in difficult situations, even if it is risking his own life and welfare. Valjean later in his life falls in love with a woman, who goes by the name of Fantine.…

    • 412 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Nafisi
    • 1633 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Nafisi

    From merely the last two decades, women have begun to show out in society with their vast achievements and accomplishments. In the early days of the Iranian revolution, a young woman named Azar Nafisi started teaching at the University of Tehran. However, in 1981, Nafisi was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear an Islamic veil. Seven years later, however, she did indeed resume teaching but soon resigned in protest over the increasingly cruel punishments of the Iranian government toward women. She dreamed of working with students that carried a great passion for learning. In Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi and her seven students join together every Thursday morning at her home and discuss classic texts of Western literature that have to do with prominent figures. In the conditions Nafisi lived in , however, it was illegal for women to form small study groups that didn 't have to do with what the government wanted them to learn about. Nafisi, herself, knew the risks and how dangerous it would be to betray the laws of the Iranian government. At that time, women were forced to live by dreadful laws; laws that made women dress a certain way when being seen in public. They were only allowed to dress up in black robes and head scarves, only their face and hands being uncovered. With the conditions that Nafisi and her students lived under, it is more dangerous to withdraw into their dreams rather to resign themselves to a disturbing reality because of how restricted the laws were forced upon the citizens of Iran.…

    • 1633 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Effects Of Oppression In Persepolis
    • 785 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Effects Of Oppression In Persepolis

    Have you ever thought what it would be like to grow up without your freedom? The novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is an autobiography of her life growing up in Iran during a time of revolution and oppression. Marjane is a young girl who is inquisitive, religious, outspoken and ambitious. She grows up struggling to understand the many rules imposed by the Shah which over time changes her. Years of oppression and injustice in Iran following the Islamic Revolution leads to long-term, negative psychological effects such as rebellion, coldness, and indifference as illustrated by Marjane Satrapi between the ages of 10 to 14.…

    • 785 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Les Justes Sparknotes
    • 300 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Les Justes Sparknotes

    In the play Les Justes by Albert Camus, the main characters believe that they are serving the common people by plotting to overthrow the ruling elite of Russia. The fulfillment of their goals, and not taking into account the needs of the common people poses an important question, To what extent can someone be truly free if they are imprisoned? The protagonist of Les Justes, a young man named Yanek is very idealistic, and he believes that he is helping to set the poor free from the tyrannical rule of Russia’s government at the time. When Yanek goes to prison, he meets a man named Foka, who confronts Yanek about how much he is really helping the common people.…

    • 300 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Islam and the Great Turkish Headscarf War
    • 3675 Words
    • 15 Pages

    Islam and the Great Turkish Headscarf War

    Even so, the code that dictates what Turkish women may or may not stick on their heads when they study at universities or take government jobs has a comic absurdity. In the wig shops that have sprung up across Istanbul, the Christina Aguilera-ish blonde dos are worn by the clubbers and transvestites who party in bars around polyglot Taksim Square, but the bestselling model is a mouse-brown, fringed bob of synthetic hair, bought in the thousands every September by devout Muslim girls, to be pulled from bags and on to heads to replace the scarves that must be removed before they can pass through college doors. Turkey, always a gateway between Europe and Asia, is the nexus of our most fervent global dialogues: East v West, secularism v religion, state v the individual. Turkey poses the question: can an Islamic nation be truly democratic? And how the West longs for an affirmative answer. In the middle,…

    • 3675 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Theme of Identity for the Story of Zahra
    • 1189 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Theme of Identity for the Story of Zahra

    Written by Hanan al-Shaykh, the Story of Zahra is a very detailed and book that opens the sacred yet messed up life of Lebanese woman by the name of Zahra. A lady by the name of Semia Harbawi gives it the perfect explanation. She says “It is a thrust into those tender zones of the psyche laid open to a probing, inquisitive gaze”. The author of this book really gives the reader a 100% probing into this young lady’s life, with no regard for her secrets, short comings or her embarrassing thoughts and deeds. This is what gives this book its raw detailed edge that made me want to read more and more. The book shows constant instances of the betrayal of this woman’s trust, the total mutilation of her self-respect and her self-esteem and the continuous invasion of her personal life by strangers and hateful family members. This author shows the outside of the Islamic community what the life of woman that goes against the Qur'an looks like. She had the principles at heart but because along with the help of the continuous taunting of her whole community and the ones she loves most, she was otherwise forced to do the things that she did. In this essay I will explain one of the many negative encounters that Zahra had, IDENTITY PROBLEMS. She had what is called, Schizoid. This is a personality disorder that originates from a lack of interest in social relationships and results in a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness, and sometimes (sexual) apathy, with a simultaneous rich, elaborate, and exclusively internal fantasy world. These symptoms are exactly what Zahra displays during the book.…

    • 1189 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Handmaids Tale vs Persepolis
    • 958 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Handmaids Tale vs Persepolis

    Whereas Satrapi depicts in her graphic novel a picture of a ten year old forced to wear a veil because of the Islamic Revolution, “ We didn’t really like the veil, especially since we didn’t understand why we had to”(3) explaining further the complexities surrounding the veil. She says some religious fundamentalist feels that hiding hair could keep…

    • 958 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Not Without My Daughter Analysis
    • 1403 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Not Without My Daughter Analysis

    The Western Culture is more of an open-minded mentality. Over the years, specifically the American Land had welcomed different people from different nationalities, they all lived together on the same territory, coexisting; that explains the tolerance its people have towards foreigners. The Arab Culture is found to be realistically less impartial than the Western. Particularly in Iran, the citizens are fanatics of their religion, especially since the 80’s, after the Iranian Revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. At that time, Iranians weren't happy under the reign of Emperor Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi because of the allegiance to the west during Cold war and the political reforms, which include women's right to vote. Most…

    • 1403 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics