Not Because of the Revolution

         Persepolis is one of the most unique books I have ever read. On one hand it is about the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the years following it. The effects it had on the Iranian population and philosophy. On the other hand it is about a girl named Marjane Satrapi and her coming of age. When you connect these two story lines it makes for an extremely interesting book containing both accurate and informative historical content, and smart, funny details about growing up as a teenage girl in pre and post-revolution Iran. However, it is often hard to differentiate between whether Marji's actions are caused by the hard times she is growing up in, or by her own person, independent of whatever outside events are occurring. One of the topics our book club focused on was how her personal philosophy and, therefore, actions were affected by her environment and whether they are therefore excusable. I think that Marji's actions are affected by her upbringing in the times of revolution rather than the effects of the revolution itself and therefore she is responsible for them.
        The revolution of Iran left many families without family members, killed in riots and tortured for being communist thinkers. It left many bereft of money or jobs after organizations were labeled bourgeois or "western." Many imprisoned young women were raped as it was against the law to kill a virgin. Compared to there occurrences, Marji's family was virtually untouched by both the Shah or the revolutionary regime. Her father kept his high level job and continued to make money to support the family while they hosted illegal parties. They were not effected by the government and flaunted their excess without regard to how it might effect their neighbors or any other non-related party. Following her self righteous parents, Marji was taught to express herself no matter the consequences and be independent of propaganda and authority while being fully immersed and enamored of revolutions of all kinds. This upbringing led Marji to get expelled from two schools and marry a man that she knew she did not truly love, all events that many shrugged off due to how she "suffered" under the revolution and regime but I believe are due to her upbringing.
         Marji was expelled from two schools due to her confrontational actions, actions that both adults in the story and my fellow book club dismissed as being ok because "she went through tough times." However, Marji's problems stemmed from trouble with accepting authority figures due to the fact that she turned everything into her own personal revolution. Marji's parents bought her many books on the topic to "educate her." She then became a revolutionary fanatic at the age of 8, dressing like Che Guevara and attempting to start a class revolution by helping her maid have a forbidden affair. These events, coupled with her parent's encouragement and avid revolutionary support, led Marji to believe that she should change everything she thought was wrong with no regard to authority: causing her to be expelled twice.
         One other questionable action that Marji committed that many excuse as brainwashing by the society she grew up was marrying a man that she did not love, and realized this on a subconscious level. While many dismiss this as an affect of the revolution and the pressure society put on her, I believe that it was another affect of her upbringing. Marji's marriage was more a rebellion against her past than a reflection of it. Marji had been raised and accustomed to despise marriage as it was stressed by the regime. By marrying Reza, she was going against what had led her almost to death, as a contradiction on herself.
           Persepolis exemplifies the difficulty in growing up in an ever changing world and how it effects impressionable young adults, but I believe that neither the regime or the revolution led Marjane to her bad decisions but her upbringing and attitude thereof.

The Bind

  What binds us to our siblings? To our parents? We grow up with these people: confine ourselves in a house with them, we love them unconditionally. And why? Is it a habit of accustom? Studies have shown that certain phermones and smells emitted by parents bond them to their children, but beyond science there is an unjustifiable bond in family, something so hard to break that even when your family is as scattered as your monster addicted mother's brain after a line, they affect you deeply and irrevocably.
                I just finished reading the book Fallout by Ellen Hopkins. I've read her other books and skimmed through this one, but had not read it in full. Curious to see what happened to Kristina, I picked up the lyrical third book in her much vaunted  series and found that this book follows the lives of her three oldest children. I left Kristina when she was 19, with a one year old child and pregnant with a baby girl. Hunter, her eldest child, lived with her parents at the time. Kristina is going to jail and is at a loss of what to do and Hopkins picks up the story with Hunter, now almost 19.
                 Hunter is struggling with his relationship with his girlfriend, Nikki, and smokes pot (though is not really addicted). He doesn't know who his father is because his grandparents thought it best to not tell that he was a product of rape.

Hopkins then switches to Autumn, Kristina's second oldest child. Autumn has OCD and is living with her paternal grandpa (Trey, Kristina's former boyfriend's, boyfriend's father) and her aunt. Autumn lives a sheltered life, until she meets Bryce. Bryce is her first love, her first sex and her first date all rolled into one.

Finally there is Summer. Summer is living in foster care and has had a tough time. At 12 she was raped by one of her foster parents and has been moved from town to town ever since: a product of one of America's most inept systems. Summer has a boyfriend named Matt but is in love with his best friend, Kyle.*

One thing stood out to me in the book. It is a line from a poem from Summer (about Autumn):

"On the surface she is nothing like me.

But just below the skin,

we find a connection. I shudder

to think why that might be, because

our common denominator is

someone I don't want to resemble."

This line makes me think about what it must be like for the characters, to have a connection to someone which you don't want to have: to have a family you don't want to discover. However, somehow, I feel that these characters are who they are because of this connection. As I stated before, the bond that tethers them to each other is a part of who they are, something that is irrevocable.
                 Take Hunter for example, he feels lonely and left behind by his mother "spinning in a whirlwind of her dust". He craves affection from his girlfriend but it isn't enough. He cheats on her with groupies when she isn't enough. I think that he is searching for someone to fill the hole Kristina created. Because no matter what mother figure in his life tries to fill his hole, she is still not his mother.

Another example of this is Autumn. Autumn has OCD and, although she doesn't say it, she blames it partly on her mother. After all, Kristina was the one who dumped her with her boyfriend's father and never looked back. Autumn has grown up under her Grandpa's micro management and her Aunt's love. Autumn has such a dysfunctional family that she feels that everything else that can be perfect should be. Kristina was the one who left her here, so it's Kristina's fault.

Finally there is Summer. Summer, who has had the worst life of all. Summer, who knows a lot about her past but nothing about her future. Summer, who sees her mother sometimes and always ends up yelling at her. Behind the yelling, though, I see need. Need for stability in her life, need for someone to love her. Maybe this is why she runs away with Kyle. Kyle loves her, or does he? Will Summer get hurt even more? But most of all a Summer who needs a future so badly that she runs so far away that she almost dies. Summer wants to forget so much about the past that she is willing to do anything for the future.

However, though Kristina wrecks havoc through their lives, there is some of Kristina in each of them, whether they know it or not, that unalterable bind that will remain a part of them forever.

*Kristina has two other children who live with her and her boyfriend Ron.

The Real Help

              Recently I re-read the book, "The Help." Made into a major motion picture a year or so ago, "The Help" has become a favored book club read and important book for showing civil rights issues in the mainstream media on the surface, and at first I agreed with that. However, when I re-read the book and looked at some articles on the book, I noticed something different about the book, that it may not be the civil rights darling that I thought it.
               The problem, I and many others, found with the book was that although it was proclaimed to be about black maids in the conservative south essentially liberating themselves and show their strength and bravery, the book only showed that this could happen if a white person stepped in to help. Aibeleen doesn't give any serious thought to changing her life or standing up for herself until Skeeter (a white lady) comes in with the idea for a book exposing the treatment of maids in Jackson, Mississippi. The book shows the struggle for civil rights as being brought about by a white lady, and implies exactly the opposite of the civil rights movement: that african americans cannot help themselves to justice.
              This disconcerted me as the media had marketed as something totally different, and everyone from the Oscar's to the "New York Times" had heralded it as an important book. It made me think about the media today, it doesn't seem to look very deeply into what it is telling us. Based on a lot of what I've read, the media doesn't make you think, it makes you think about what it wants you to think. And this, I believe, is wrong.

The True Want for Happiness

            I just finished the book "The Lady in the Car with the Glasses and a Gun." The book, while somewhat stodgy at first, turned into a delicious thriller with twists and turns so sudden that it was almost impossible to see them coming and an ending that both satiated and hungry the reader. When I last left Dany Longo she had been mysteriously attacked, but that was all that was wrong. But we learn that was only a chip of the iceberg that was her problems on the journey. It seems that wherever Dany goes, people believe they have seen her before, that she has already visited all of the places she's been: the gas station, the Renaissance hotel: the beach: even the cafe she stopped to get an espresso at. But that's not all, Dany opens the trunk to find a dead body of a notorious womanizer of Paris wrapped in a rug and deposited with a gun. Dany attempts to solve the mystery of the man's murder and her apparent escapades about France. When she stumbles upon the answer, her boss attempts to kill her and it is revealed that is was he and his wife who killed the man and attempted to pin it on Dany, so convincingly that Dany believes she did it. Dany hears his story, leaves and gets married to a man in England.
                 The ending seemed strange to me, after all of Dany's adventures, her mental instability and mania: her constant desire to be on her own, how could she just settle down and marry someone? How could her weekend of paranoia and thrills not affect her? But then I realized that the trip was what Dany needed to move on from her "just there" state of being perennially worried for no reason. The trip's insanity was the climax of her madness, the thing that pushed her to the edge. If she had submitted to the mystery and accepted her apparent guilt for the murder and hide the body away, she never would have moved on from the horrible monotony her life held before. By solving the mystery she took an active role against being the victim of circumstance as she had before (her parents death, her lack of funds, her lack of love) and her life turned out much differently. This led her to happiness in the end, as she passed the test of being passive and lacking any zeal for life (as she had been) or being actively involved in her life, not just accepting what was given.
               To conclude, in order for Dany to settle down, and be seemingly "normal." She had to confront the thing about herself that was holding herself back in a finite and important way. She was tested on whether she truly wanted to be happy and, passing this, got everything she wanted.

Symbolism in "The Lady in the Car with the Glasses and a Gun"

           Currently I am halfway through the tantalizing yet somehow dreary book that is, "The Lady in the Car with the Glasses and a Gun." The book takes place sometime in the mid 1900s, in France. The book begins in Paris France, and follows "The Lady" or Dany Longo, as she travels around France on the verge of a psychotic breakdown in a car borrowed from her boss. The book begins with Dany emerging from a state of unconsciousness in a gas station bathroom after being attacked. However, the only thing the attacker did to her was break her hand, her money is all there and nothing else has been damaged. We are then taken to the days preceding her attack and focus in on the day it happened, showing us the circumstances of her ordeal.
             The book is rife with symbolism, its title in itself states the books three biggest symbols. Number one, the car. The car is a symbol of Dany's weakness for luxury and the downfall that is in her longing for more than what is given to her. When Dany lived at the orphanage, being able to drive MOther "Supe" Superior around in the car is what gave her a little bit of freedom, a little bit of pleasure that was not found in her everyday life. THe car she has borrowed from the boss fits this perfectly, the luxury car she is temporarily allowed to have, but leads her to break the rules of the loan and keep the car for longer. In other words, her love for the things above her station is what leads her to her downfall.
              Number two, the glasses. Dany wears darkened prescription glasses at all times, she believes they protect her from the world. To me, they symbolize both her inverted-ness,  her painful shyness and the subtle narcism that comes from such an inverted state of being. The idea that she is mysterious that she is inapproachable is selfish in that she is just trying to get out of the difficult situations that occur when she tries to be social. She would rather withdraw from all humans and pretend to be mysterious and aloof than face the pain that comes from interacting with people. The glasses symbolize how selfish yet helpless she really is. It is these weaknesses, symbolized by the Car and the Glasses that lead her to her attack.
              As I am only halfway through the book, I have not gotten to the section devoted to the Gun, and I don't think that the Lady symbolizes anything but Dany herself. However, there were two other symbols for parts of Dany's life that led her to the attack that I noticed.
               One of these was the Pink Elephant that was on her desk, lined up with all of her typing supplies. It symbolizes Dany's childhood. When he proposes the job offer to Dany, her boss moves the elephant from the line. This symbolizes him giving her an opportunity to move on from her childlike existence and become a more mature adult. He is giving her an opportunity to prove herself. Dany at first moves it back and refuses the job, but then realizes that she should take it as it means more money and takes it with her to give to his daughter. She is ready to pass it along and let go of her childhood. However, Dany forgets it and does not get to give it to the little girl. This symbolizes that she can't let go of her childhood just yet and her infantile behavior leads her into the trouble she is now facing.
                The last important symbol I noticed in "The Lady in the Car with the Glasses and a Gun" is the symbolism of the white suit. The white suit symbolizes Dany's hope for the future: her good intentions and her remaining innocence. Like the car it is luxe, but also sensible, which refutes the fault in it. However, the suit gets progressively ruined over the course of the book, showing that Dany's hopes will be dashed and that her intentions will not lead to good results. And that, like the idea of keeping a white suit clean over a journey, her hopes are unrealistic.
                 To conclude, there is much symbolism in the book "The Lady in the Car with the Glasses and a Gun," and it makes for an interesting story if you are willing to look deeply enough.
           

Underlying Themes in The Sweet Far THing

              I have just finished reading the last book in the "Gemma Doyle Trilogy," "The Sweet Far Thing." These books were so addictive and fast paced that I only took a week to go through all of the cumulative 17 hundred plus pages of the trilogy. On the "surface" the book was a Gothic, set at a traditional English girls boarding school, isolated with mysterious gargoyles and churches... And don't forget woods! Filled with Gypsies and mysterious noises and magical powers, alternative universes (the bad: The Winterlands, and the good, The Realms) the "Gemma Doyle Triogy" had all the trappings of a trashy Gothic romance. However, it also embedded some deeper themes into its passionate, tragic, fantastical tale.
             One of the themes was women's rights. Hyped constantly throughout the trilogy and emphasized in nearly every chapter, the author Libba Bray obviously had the intent to educate her readers on the plight of women in England. One example were the factory girls, burned in a fire to save money, they rejected the male voice of the Winterlands (Amar) and instead formed their own clan with the female Pippa. I saw this as Bray telling girls to not count on men in all endeavors and be independent. In addition, Bray increasingly mentioned the presence of female suffragettes in London as Gemma and her friends traveled to and began to explore the city. It was not really apparent how the suffragettes contributed to the narrative, if not to just underline the theme of women's rights. But the greatest push for women's rights in the books came from the idea of the realms themselves, utopias where women could rule and be powerful (obviously a metaphor for what they hoped the future would be). Felicity learned how to shoot arrows and be powerful there, Gemma found the magic within herself in the realms-Women could be independent!
        Much like when mothers sneak vegetables in deserts for picky children, the women's rights theme was very obvious once you actually noticed it, and it made parts of the books hard to read as all you could see it as all you could see was the propaganda-like details that Bray included (no matter how much I agreed with it). One such moment in the book was in the very end, where Gemma demands that   the young ladies of Spence finishing school actually be taught "worthwhile things" so they can be intelligent and independent. Another moment was Gemma spurning the idea of staying and attending her season in England, and instead traveling to New York.
              Too conclude, the books were very obviously a push for women's rights, and their non-subtlety ruined any impact they might have. Although I agreed with the idea and Gemma's actions, their conspicuousness nullified their impact

The Ones Who Built the Fire

            Today I decided to take yet another trip down memory lane and revisit the girl who was on fire, who is still on fire in the minds of some. Yes, you know who I'm talking about, Katniss Everdeen.

            You've all heard of Katniss Everdeen. She's the girl who survived the hunger games. Twice. She the subject of the love of two desirable guys. She is a deadly weapon disguised as a human girl. She is confused, she is hurt. She is lovesick and furious, dangerous and sad. She hates humanity, she loves it. She is a turmoil of emotions. She confides in no one. Not even her parents. family. When you read this your mind probably flashed to your own. Annoying dad, patronizing mom, we all know the story. However, you probably have memories of hugs, words whispered to you at the dead of night when you are scared of the dark. Kisses dropped on your skinned knee. Parents are meant to love you. You can confide in your parents, and hopefully they will help you. However, Katniss, who has been through so much, doesn't confide in her parents. Rereading the Hunger Games, I looked closer into the dynamics of Katniss' relationship with her parents, the ones who built the fire that would become a powerful inferno.

        First, I looked at Katniss' mother. The book never mentions her name, is this a reference to how removed she is from Katniss' life? Well, she certainly is removed, ever since Katniss' mother fell into depression, Katniss is filled with mistrust for her mom. I think that Katniss and her mother should have worked harder to rebuild their relationship. Though no one could fathom that Katniss would have to compete in the Hunger Games, life in district 12 is tough, and a 16 year old girl needs someone to confide in. I think that things could have worked out better for Katniss if she and her mother confided in each other. If Katniss had talked to someone about her tepid relationship with Gale, maybe she would have felt less guilty about kissing Peeta. If Katniss had talked with her mother during the time she spent in district thirteen, maybe she would have been more mentally stable. And if she and her mom had had a better relationship, she might of had someone to support her when Prim died. Instead, Katniss began a descent into madness. Everyone knows that mothers baby you sometimes. Katniss was never babied. She always had to be mature and responsible, way beyond her years. Katniss was resentful of this, it turned her into the hardened killer who won the 74th Hunger games. And as she has said many times, "no decent person ever wins the games."

          Then there's Katniss' father. The one who died when Katniss was 11. If Katniss' father was alive, then the story might not have happened. Mr.Everdeen would have been the main hunter for the Evergreens and Katniss would not have to shoulder that responsibility. Mr. Everdeen would have put food on the table and cared for his daughters. If Katniss' dad was still alive, Katniss' mother would've never fallen into depression, causing Katniss and her mother to still get along. Katniss loved her father, he would have counseled her to the best decisions, and she would have felt safe. On the other hand if Katniss' father lived, she wouldn't have had all of the opportunities to practice hunting, as he would have been the main hunter. Also, Katniss wouldn't have become so hard and invincible. She wouldn't have been the vicious killer who won the games.

            There's no denying that parents are annoying, but they give you more help than you give them credit for. Supporting parents can help so much in a time of need. If Katniss had had a different parental situation, her life would be so much different. Katniss needs her parents, she just doesn't know it. And even though Katniss thinks she has more romantic love than she needs, she needs some parental love too.