Q: Marjane must learn new cultural expectations, including but not limited to religion, language, gender, and living situations. In what ways does this affect Marjane?
In the second part of Persepolis Marjane moves to Europe. When she first moves there she notices that a lot of things she was used to was completely different than what the normal cultural expectations in Europe were. I think that the thing she would normally not do but she does anyway is smoking. This is from peer preassure not because she actually wants to but she wanted to fit in with the people she hung out with. She noticed that in Europe it was okay to have sex before marriage and she wasn't used to it. On page 186 Marjane was very disturbed but this changed her view later on in the book. She didn't think that sex before marriage was okay until the cultural difference started to have an influence on her on page 213 when she said that she was "too ugly for him to want her." Marjane changes a lot when she moves and she was also affected with guilt. She felt guilty that she was starting to morph into the European culture while her parents were having a hard time back home.
Prompt: In the first chapter, we found out that Thi's father Bô was not in the delivery room with Má when their children were born. What do you think about that when you read that? And by the end of the book, did you ideas shift? If so, how and why? If not, how and why not? In the first chapter Ma says that Bo was not present for all of his children birth. For Thi's birth Bo was actually at the movie theater. When I read this I thought that this was part of their culture. Ma also seemed to be okay with this. I also feel like this might have something to do with generations. It might have been okay for Bo not to be their for his children's birth than if Travis wasn't there for his child's birth. I think that Bo and Ma's relationship had something to do with why Bo didn't come to the delivery of his children. Throughout the book my thoughts developed about Bo's absents. I believe that he was very scared for Ma and he didn't want to see her in ...
I think this is really cool how you talked about culture in your blog.
ReplyDeleteI did not think much about how it effected her perception on sex before marriage. Now that you brought it up I can see more of the effect that Western culture is having on her. Do you think that if her parents were there with her she would hold on to her Iranian morals, or would she still conform to the Western norms?
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