Final draft

                                                                                 Final Draft

In Persepolis, Marjan has a great message to all people around the world. Her rebelling against anything that is wrong , and her independent mind are admirable."Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you -- who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, and treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder."(Charlie Chaplin ,final speech in the Great Dictator). During the hard time of her life, when the government was controlling people and manipulating their religions, ideologies, and situations, she figured out the truth that people deserve happiness, freedom and equality in their life, and she stood up along with several others to fight for her belief.                                             

           

“I was born with religion” (Satrapi 6). Some people think that a religious person is defined as a person who prays regularly. I also believe that Marjan was born with religion. Most people are born with religion, without having any chance to choose. The kind of religion we are born with depends on the religion of our ancestors. It has become a tradition in every society. Nobody is asked whether s/he wants to have religion or not, or which religion s/he wants to have. I think most people who claim to have a religious belief, don't even know what their own religion says; they attack the different ideas blindly, and don't take a chance to learn different ideas. Intolerance has made them blind. "Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance" (Chaplin). I don,t have enough knowledge about religions, but the only thing that I know is  that unfortunately religions have been the best  tools in the  leaders’ greedy hands. For example, in my country Iran, Islamic republic encouraged young people to fight against Iraq and said that suffering martyrdom would take them to heaven. "The key to paradise was for poor people. Thousands of young kids, promised a better life, exploded on the minefields with their keys around their necks” (Satrapi 102).

People in power have always tried to find some way to control the people . They try to cause disunion among people to govern. They have always tried to make people believe that they are all different from each other because of their races, religions, abilities, situations, cultures, ideologies, and so on, to make them fight against each other. For a long period of time, Muslim fundamentalists were telling ignorant people that Christian people are unclean and it was religiously prohibited to keep company with Christians. Also, for a long time after that planned disaster on the Twin Towers in New York, media in America told the Americans that Middle Easterns were all terrorists and instigated them against each other. The purpose of all these illusions is greed. “The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed” (Chaplin final speech in the Great Dictator).Unfortunately with the help of this deceit, the United States started a long war in the Middle East that has brought nothing but misery for both American and Middle East’s people.

            Marjan is the symbol of a deep humanity, who is looking for happiness, respect, sympathy towards others, equality and freedom for all the humanity, someone whose mind has not been too manipulated to lose her consciousness completely. She is still having the love of humanity in her heart.  She naturally feels that all of the humanity has one nature, so all of them have the same right to live. She is the symbol of the natural man whose mind has not yet changed completely. Before the revolution in Iran the educational system which is the main language of the governors, told her that Shah-the king of Iran- was the representative of God and after the revolution, the next government claims to be the representative of God too. She got confused especially when her teacher who, “was the one who told us that the Shah was chosen by God."(Perspolis 44) said, "Children, tear out all the photos of the Shah from your books."(Satrapi 44).She couldn’t digest that some people in power "tell us what to do and what to think and what to feel"(Charlie Chaplin final speech in the Great Dictator). In 1980, "the year it became obligatory to wear the veil at school"(Satrapi 3) what was the difference between Reza Khan (the father of Shah) and the Islamic Republic? Reza Khan forced people to take off their veil and Islamic republic forced them to wear the veil. Marjan had a lot of questions in her mind. Some of them were answered by her parents and some understood by reading books. She began to search for the answers of her questions from any kind of sources. It was lucky that Marjan's family was open-minded enough to help her find the answers. Even one day her father said, “I think you are old enough to understand certain things you should know...."(Satrapi 22). Somewhere else she said, “I realized then that I didn't understand anything. I read all the books I could.” (Satrapi 32) She always had a dream of equality and justice for all the people who suffered class distinction. She believed in God as the symbol of justice and equality who supported the oppressed. But when she found out that God did nothing to prevent these cruel and injustices, she didn’t stick to believing in God, and lost her faith. She tried to find some other way to reach her dreams.

Marjan is a brave individual who tries to know the truth without intolerance. "Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance.”(Charlie Chaplin final speech in the Great Dictator) She wants to make her own decisions, and not follow a wrong way just because that is a public opinion. All of those who have the same thoughts as Marjan can't stay silent when the people in power on the top of the pyramid, who can be counted by fingers, are always making bloodshed  in order to satisfy their greed, while on the bottom of the pyramid the people are striving to survive.

Marjan is one of these people around the world who have understood the truth and are standing against oppression, exploitation, and injustice. Those 99% who are demonstrating against 1% in  the occupy wall street in New York , Oakland, and all around the world, those who are fighting against oppressors in Iran, Libya, Syria and Egypt, … ,those who are speaking out that we are not cattle, we are not machines, we are men. “Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate" (Charlie Chaplin final speech in Great Dictatot). People no matter in what time and situation are human being that deserve freedom and rights, under no control of anyone but themselves.

Work Citation

Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis. New York: Pantheon Books, 2004.Print.

 "Charlie Chaplin Final Speech in The Great Dictator - YouTube." YouTube - Broadcast     Yourself. Web. 31 Oct. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4>.

What was the purpose for all of this tragedy?

One of the most significant defining characteristics of revolutionary generation is being rebellious, or at least in my country-Iran- it was. Also one of the most significant defining of a succeeding revolution is that the majority of the people in a society rebel against the government’s authority, and children cannot be excluded from this majority. I remember one day during the revolution, we had some guests in our home. As usual their children were playing with each others. They were between the ages of four to seven. Something interesting drew my attention to their playing. It was the beginning of the game. They were introducing themselves to others. It was something like a referendum. One of them said that she wanted a proletarian government. Another one said he wanted liberalism and so on. I remember at that time I had a four years old brother. I loved to buy and read books for him. All of those books were trying to teach children to unite against the oppression. His common questions were about politics. For example, what “liberalism” meant, or why the Iraq attacked our country, or what “imperialism” meant and so on. The children witnessed the proceedings of the revolution and they were closely involved in these proceedings. This generation knew much more than the other children at the same age in other countries. A deep sense of social injustice was developed among the people especially children. They learned to resist to any injustice and violence, and after victory they saw the result of this resistance. They have earned this knowledge by practical experiences, not just by reading books or watching movies. Right after the revolution, all subjects and titles of books, movies and media were changed. However, the content of all was rebellious and resistant until achieving victory. Then children knew that they didn’t have to endure oppression. Marjan was not the only child who rebelled against the situation which she did not agree with. Iran witnessed a huge number of such rebels who were killed during and after the Islamic revolution.  Marjan and her family was one of the luckiest families who experienced a minimum of loss. They had money to send their beloved child to a safe place that nobody could kill her because of her opinion. Her family witnessed a lot of families who lost their children because of being executed or being killed in the war. An eight year imposed war which had no change in the borders, but left about half a million killed and wounded people who are still suffering the effect of chemical weapons, a war that just benefited the big weapons factories especially Americans factories, which could sell their weapons to both Iran and Iraq.

execution

Execution
One of the saddest scenes of the book is when Marji heard that his uncle Anoosh executed as a Russian spy .This news touched the heart of Marjan severely. She loved uncle Anoosh .She always had a dream of equality and justice for all the people and suffered that their maid eat lunch separately. She could feel class distinctions in the society and suffers that people are treated unfairly and not only are not given their rights, but also  are killed because of their demands for their rights. She is seeking for a powerful hero to efface this injustice   from the society. During revolution she thinks that the only one who can help her to reach her desires is God. Before the death of Anoosh, probably she had never had such a horrible moment like this, especially that uncle Anoosh was one of the heroes in her mind. Now they executed him. Before that sad event , she believed in God as the symbol of justice and equality who supports the oppressed. Now she finds that God did nothing to prevent these criminal actions. On the other hand she thinks that this regime is a representative of God. All of her images about God came to nought. She is really angry and frustrated, so when God comes to her and asks her what has happened, she yelled at God and says "shut up, you get out of my life!!! I never want to see you again" ( 70). Now she needs to replace someone else instead of God. The best choose is Marx. Especially that uncle anoosh and her grandfather had been following his ideology.
I have a lot of horrible memories during the time that Iran was  in an atmosphere of  terror with a huge number of executions. Any time that I remember these memory, I get a horrible palpitations. It was about one or two years after war. At that time the chief Justice of Iran  was a theologian , named khalkhali, chosen by Ayatollah Khomeini ,The leader of the revolution. "Khalkhali later investigated and ordered the execution of many activists for federalism in Kurdistan"(a province of Iran), "At the height of its activity Khalkhali's revolutionary court sentenced to death "up to 60 Kurds a day". (Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, The Daily Telegraph 28 November 2003)
At that time there were many protest groups and parties who criticized the government and tried to  warn people about all of wrong actions of the government. To prevent the people from revolting against the government Khalkhali ordered the execution of many activists. They had legislated a law that everyone who revolt against the government during the war, is an enemy of God ,and every opposition against government is exactly the same as  warring against God, and should be executed. So he ordered to inspect all the houses and cars and people who were suspected of having banned books, manifestos, printing machine, and so on ....The people had no security in their own place. During and After the Islamic revelation, the most people who were involved the revolution were interested to know about different ideologies and different political views. So they had all kind of books, magazines and etc in their home.  Now they had to hide them from the Basijies(religious police). Some people who had big town house burned all of their banned books and another items. Some times Basijies(police) could find revolutionary by the smoke of the fire, and arrested them. Some people took their books and printing machines out of their home and hide them out of town, but it was not easy because the basijies were everywhere on the roads to inspect the them. If they were arrested, they rarely could be rescued from the dead penalty punishment. I remember that in our neighborhood a child of a family was burned in the fire while they were trying to burn their printing machine. Many sources believe that Khalkhali had sentenced 8.000 men and women to dead penalty

My mother never...

My mother never...

 My mother never compared me with anybody else. She never talked about the words " better" ,"worse", "good" or "bad". She always asked me to be myself without comparing with others. She always emphasized the importance of being myself. She told me that there is a great power in accepting yourself , and when you accept yourself exactly as you are, you would release all of your potential which is needed to be grown, and then you can do everything that you want. She advised me that never try to be someone else, just because you think someone else is better than you. all people are equal. no one is better than another. this idea that you should be better than the others has been generated by our society just because they want make us to forget that we are all one nature. maybe you think that my mother is an educated person. on the contrary she is not educated. she didn't even graduate in her high school . I think this is the key that her natural mind has not been manipulated by educational  system.
 Now after many years of my childhood I can consider all of the truths that my  mom has thought me .I see people pretend that they like each other ,but this is just a show. all of them want to be better than others, so they cannot like those who have left them behind. People cannot love and hate at the same time ,and this awful competing life desires to hate if we want to win. we are always struggling to win, but on the  other hand we need to love because of our nature. these two desires are inconsistent with  each other. so we always carry a contradiction in our life.

I am

I am Zohreh Shojaee. I was born in Iran.I have been here in US for 3 years. My most important goal is to know who i am,and why i am here (on Earth), and who I want to be. Until a few months ago I thought that i have to be someone that society wants me to be based on it's own values.The values that each society imposes us and says that you are a good person if you have this  kind of character, wear in a particular way, learn the only subjects that can brings money and so on. So in every society i have to change my character hobbies,life style,the way of wearing clothes and so on.I love to learn something while I have to learn something else (which I'm not interested in) but  I learn it just because I need to make money to live.Now I have found that  there are a lot of spiritual needs that we have never spent any time to think about it.