Saturday, March 16, 2013

RR #2 (Persepolis)


Harry Chin

Professor Knapp

English 1A

7 April 2013

Unspoken Truth

       The book Persepolis illustrates the struggle of Marjane, a young girl’s childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution who was trying to discover the truth. From a young girl, who was innocent and bliss when she was given knowledge of what was happening around in her country, she became tainted with all the knowledge of violence and torture happening and turned into a girl who stood for what she believed in. Marjane was a young child who always believed everything she heard from the news. Some would say this is ignorance, but actually it was innocence just like any other child that believed the world was perfect. That was until she slowly became aware of what was actually happening. This scenario is similar to a child who has been told that Santa is a real being who actually comes down to every chimney during Christmas Eve to deliver presents and then the child eventually discovers that Santa was not real. The fact that nobody told Marjane about the truth of all the horrid actions that were happening to the ones close to her was because everybody, even her family, wanted to protect her from the outside world. They always concealed the truth or even not mention a single thing about what was happening. But her family could not conceal her in a shell much longer. She eventually discovered the truth through her schoolmates, the media and her uncle. She learned about all the corrupted actions in her country such as violence, war, and enforced religious norms.

 She finally understood why the truth was not usually spoken. One of her classmate’s fathers was a fighter pilot for Iran. Suddenly a major incident happened and many of Iran’s fighter pilots were destroyed. Her classmate’s father was killed and they were supposed to give speech about something memorable about the war. After class, Marjane tried to comfort her classmate. Marjane told her classmate, “Your father acted like a Genuine hero, you should be proud of him”. She responded, “I wish he were alive and in jail rather than dead and a hero” (Satarapi 86). This is when Majane realized why the truth was concealed and sugarcoated from her. The country that she lives in has an unspoken truth. What I mean about unspoken truth is that there are truths where you would rather not tell people because you believe it will hurt them.  In the case of Marjane’s classmate, she realized that every person takes the truth in a different way. I believed that everybody needs to know the truth no matter how much it seems like it is a negative. In this essay, I want to write about one’s path towards understanding why the truth is unspoken in a certain society.

 

Works Cited

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: [the Story of a Childhood]. New York, New York: Pantheon, 2003. Print.

1 comment:

  1. Nice reflection here. I like how you summarize the theme of truth in the book and then connect to the reality of protecting a child from the truth. Your last line alludes to another paragraph that I would be interested in reading or you could continue this concept in your RA post (now late) by examining one specific image that examines the theme of realizing or knowing the truth. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete