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Reading Lolita in Tehran (Literature ("The theme of the class was the…
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Literature
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"It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else’s shoes and understand the other’s different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless."
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Power
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Government
"Her veil, which to her was a symbol of sacred relationship to god, had now become an instrument of power, turning the women who wore them into political signs and symbols."
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Men and the government hold complete control in Iran, Women are subjected to all sorts of laws, and Nafisi's students experience things like being stopped to have their bags checked, being criticized for their makeup, or dress.
Home
"There were discrepancies, or essential paradoxes of my idea of home"
Woman at Point Zero
Respect
“After I had spent three years at the company, I realized that as a prostitute I had been looked upon with more respect, and been valued more highly than all the female employees, myself included.”
Firdaus works under the power of men at the company, which is what is considered to be respectable
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Firdaus tries to become respectable and conform to society, however she realizes that she gains no real respect from this and is much more highly valued as prostitue.
Power
Money
When Firduas encounters the prince, who offers her 2000 pounds, she agrees then takes the money and rips it to pieces proving that nothing even money or fear of prison or death could control her.
For the majority of the book, more money means more power.
Men over women
When Firdaus falls in love she was also putting herself under the power of a man which is something that would make her respectable in her society
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Gender Expectations
Firdaus is not like any other women in the story or in her society where women are expected to answer to men
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Fear
“Why was it that I had never stabbed a man before? I realized that I had been afraid, and that fear had been within me all the time, until the fleeting moment when I read fear in his eyes.”
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Fiela's Child
Identity
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“Answer me, Ma, Am I the child that got lost? Am I Lucas”
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Benjamin struggles between identities, split between two families, told to change from Benjamin to Lukas.
Racial Expectations
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As Benjamin grows up in a Coloured family, he learns to act and behave like them, which to him is normal but to the whites, something shocking and wrong.
Gender Expectations
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Fiela acts as the head of the household, and supports her family
“It’s Nina. You must see that she stays away from the Forest; it’s not a place for a girl all by herself.”
Impact of Decisions
“The tall one with the spectacles, came and stood just behind me and said, “The one wearing the blue shirt.”
These decisions by both the man and Barta cause Benjamin to have to part from his family and live with a family with whom he does not belong for many years
Out Stealing Horses
Isolation
Living alone and escaping from society does not keep problems away - Trond has to come to terms with his own past and his own problems before he can live out his life in peace
“they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you"
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Fate/Coincidence
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“Lars is Lars even though I saw him last when he was ten years old, and now he’s past sixty.”
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Parents and Children
“merely to look at that face for longer than three minutes made the world push at [his] shoulders from both sides.”
“His movements and skills is a man of barely forty, as my father was when I saw him for the last time… and he vanished from my life forever.”
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Pain
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Trond hears this lesson from his summer during their time together and remembers this for a long time
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