Conflict/ Control

During Marina’s teenage years, the government seemed to be getting out of hand.  The government tried to control everything.  Anyone who was against them was punished; sent to prison and/or executed.  The government had an obsession with power.  Gradually it had become completely outrageous; you couldn’t have a different opinion…at least not one that would offend the government.  Fast-forward to Marina's life in Evin, being a prisoner she had no choice.  Being told when she could sleep, pray, have a shower, etc.  Then her only decision presented itself- to marry or not to marry. 

Marina’s main conflict is deciding whether or not she should marry Ali.  She is put into a situation where she seems to lose either way.  Marrying him means she is put into a loveless marriage.  Or she could turn him down, and risk her life, Andre’s, and her parents'.  Marina agrees to marry him out of fear and guilt. 

The only way to get married Ali tells Marina she must convert to Islam and gets a new name.  He essentially tells her, if she doesn’t co-operate she knows she’s putting her family in danger.  Reluctantly with the feeling of so much anger, she agrees to convert.  After moving into a house with Ali, she is out of extreme harms way and knows she should feel safe but realizes that all of her happiness and safety had disappeared the moment she was arrested. Marina’s marriage had been incredibly hard on her; she had to give up a lot due to Ali’s control over her and his passion for her.  His hate towards Andre and connections to hurt others scares Marina into doing most of the things Ali demands.  She comments, “When I was being tortured, I had managed to maintain a sense of authority, a strange kind of power that physical torment could never steal away.  But now, I was his.  He had me.”  (pg.188)

A week after their marriage, Marina decides to try to live her life and stop feeling sorry for herself.  Life after that, she was still terrified of him.  Every time he came towards her or touched her she wanted to run away.  She felt so uncomfortable and felt unsafe most of the time.  When Ali’s family came over for dinner, his sister and Marina start talking about their arranged marriages.  Her perception, opinion and feelings had all changed. 

  

When back at Evin, she felt so useless and helpless she asked Ali if she could help the other prisoners.  She talks to the other girls trying to comfort them, helping them with anything that they need to stay hopeful and some-what sane.  She talked to Sarah trying to give her hope when they sentenced her to 8 years in prison.  She tried to do that with every girl.  Knowing she wouldn’t be executed under the protection of Ali and his family, she felt guilty and wanted to help others as much as she could.  She had no control over their futures and in turn wanted to do some good. 

Throughout her life Marina had always depended on her religion and God to help her through everything.  Even when she converted to Islam, she relied on God.  She prayed for girls in the prison to get better and feel better.  With most of her freedom taken away, Marina’s ability to have control over her life had be slowly taken away.  One thing that stayed the same was her belief in God.  It was the one thing that she had a sense of control over; her ability to believe and pray and have faith in God.

In the end, Marina did as she was told.  When it came to protecting her friends and family she did anything.  She had no power or control.  The government and Ali were at the top of the food chain.  She was given choices on her fate but they were always so difficult the outcome was bad either way.  She knew with the circumstances, she had to do what she had to do.  In the end, fear, greed, power, and control all factored into Marina’s situation and experiences.

Quotes:

"Why did we turn our backs on reality when it became too much to bear?"  (pg.159)

"Wasn't an innocent life worth a fight, even if this fight was condemmed to failure?  I was responsible for her death, because I had accepted her fate.  But why had I remained silent?  Was I afraid of dying?"  (pg. 159)

"Mr.Moosavi hoped that I realized that the person I had been before Evin was dead."  (pg.172)

"Anger, fear, and a terrible sense of humiliation twisted, turned, and rose inside me like a

storm that had nowhere to go, until I had no energy left, until I accepted there was

nowhere to run, unil I surrendered."  (pg. 188)

"I wanted to cry, and I couldn't.  I wanted to scream, and I couldn't.  I wanted to stop terrible things from happening, and I couldn't."  (pg.208)

"...Although the hope of going home became fainter and more dreamlike, we secretly held it in our hearts and refused to let it die."  (pg. 213) 

Comparison

Marina and I have had different life experiences and have grown up in completely opposite lifestyles.  With all of the stories she’s lived and all of the stories I have, I have found some events in how we compare to each other.  Each paragraph below has an event Mariana has gone through and one that I have that is similar.  I have compared out lives in a few different ways with the topic of love, feelings, confusion, and lost.

In 1979, the Shah was forced into exile and after his long exile he came back.  He had told Marina that he felt nothing with his return; even after many people had sacrificed their lives for his return.  Marina couldn’t understand his response and thinking.  Having someone say or do something that confuses you is definitely a universal event.  Specifically, for me, my brother had left my family when I was 7.  In grade 2, one day he was there and the next, poof, he wasn’t there.  My parents not knowing what to tell me, (because the actual reason was a concept too hard to grasp as a 7 year old) said he was on a vacation.  Eventually I had realized he wasn’t coming back, that he left forever.  Even though my parents didn’t dare tell me the truth, they knew I knew and tried to comfort me.  I couldn’t understand why he left or what caused him to leave us, because we were happy together as a family unit.  Now knowing the truth, I still don’t understand his reasons and morals.  Even when I've had a talk with him, his rationalizations and excuses were nothing but incomprehensible for me.  I was as lost as a child in a toy store.  I just felt nothing really.  (Reference to pg. 96)

With Marina’s interesting background and religious views she is unlike any other in Tehran.  The world around her soon became divided into 4 groups and she didn’t agree with any of them.  She says, “Almost everyone belonged to a group, and I didn’t, and this left me feeling lost and lonely.”  Just that quote by itself, can be applied to anyone and everyone’s lives.  Having that feeling of being lost and confused is something that many go through.  For me, it’s a high school thing.  Everyone groups themselves and stays together like Velcro.  As for me, not knowing to which group I belong to, I always feel a bit lost.  Feeling lonely is a different issue in which I feel once in a while.  The realization of your friend not knowing you as well as you thought, the friend you knew them to be, or having a boy break your heart.  Not knowing who your real friends are or where you belong makes you  vulnerable and lonely. (Reference to pg.100)

 

Marina talks about the revolution taking over her life and ability to live life normally.  The school had changed rules about the way the students (specifically women) had to look, the way they had to act, and they way they’d learn and what they’d learn.  She says school used to be the best part, she loved to learn and genuinely loved school and the government had turned it into a kind of hell.  And continues to list things that had bothered her but the last and most important one she says was that Arash was dead.  That nothing was left for her.  Marina makes it clear that love is extremely important to her and earlier on in the book she admits that the reason as to why she didn’t open up to love with Andre was due to her not wanting to lose him.  In terms of myself here, I am once again similar.  I truly enjoy school and like to learn as much as possible.  I’m the kind of student that will still go to school sick and/or tired just to stay on top of work and to learn more.  And in regards to love, I am in love with love.  I value it just as much and am quite hesitant too when it comes to relationships, with fear of losing the person ending up broken hearted.    References to pg.110 and 125)

 

Quotes

"I had somehow slipped through time as if my sorrow had cut me out of the world, like scissors snipping a simple shape out of a piece of paper."  (pg.103)

"I wanted the angel to come and tell me why people died.  I needed him to come and tell me why God was taking the ones I loved."  (pg.103)

"A year had passed since his death.  Four seasons of loss and grief." (pg.105)

"I wish I had been shot to death.  I didn't want to live.  What was the point of so much suffereing?"  (pg.129)

"Slowly, almost everything I loved became illegal.  western novels, my escape and solace, were declared "santanic" and became difficult to find." (pg. 131)

Character: Marina Nemat

There’s a Persian proverb that says, “The sky is the same colour wherever you go.”  Marina takes this literally and throughout the first few chapters proves that the proverb is wrong.  We are quickly introduced to a young girl who has endured a colossal amount of pain no human should endure, in 14 years.  Marina goes on to flip back and forth from past and present.  Story-telling her childhood memories and her experience in the prison, Evin.  The first chapter is told from her current situation, married with two sons, looking back on her days in Evin and Tehran.  She believes that the only way to get over what has happened and healthily progress is to go back and truly deal with her horrific past.  She wanted to talk and write as much as she could about it and to not dismiss her stories so that they could stop haunting her and she could move on.  She believed that once she put her experiences, thoughts, and bloody details onto paper, that she would feel better.  Because it was considered wrong and inappropriate to talk about her experiences no one talked about it, she never got to talk about it. 

Marina comments on her life when she was a young girl.  While growing up her family had a low-middle income.  She had a small but comfortable house, heating, went to school, but didn’t have enough money for items like books.  Her parents seemed to be distant and uninvolved with her life.  Her father was always working and when he came home, she would dance and try to get his attention, though his eyes were glued to the newspaper.  As for her mother, when she wasn’t working at her beauty parlor she would rather Marina be in her room out of sight, than help with cooking and spending time together.  Her mother found taking care of her daughter was too much of a hassle and tended to just shove her aside constantly.  Because of the neglect from her parents, Marina found love from other people, mainly her grandmother.  Marina’s grandmother was the one person she would always run to when things got difficult.  Her grandmother was Russian and Christian which was unlike others in Tehran.  She was very unique and had taught Marina plenty of life lessons, one being religion.  Marina quickly caught onto Christianity; she prayed and truly believed.  When her grandmother explained how her husband had died, Marina had learnt her first lesson of ‘harsh realities of life’.  Each detail drilled into her brain by her grandmother’s shrieks, Marina goes back to that day as the beginning. 

Then with her grandmother’s death at such a young age, Marina learns to be mature and understand complicated concepts, like death.  Marina’s grandmother was her personality shaper.  She had essentially mothered Marina as her own.  While Marina tried to deal with death she in turn dove into the world of books becoming adventurous and curious of the world.  Reading as many as she could she then started living her days at the bookstore.  With hundreds and hundreds of books she took comfort in being part of another story and escaped bad times through reading.  The bookstore keeper, Albert took a liking to Marina and treated her like his own; he acted fatherly-like.  Marina learnt how to be thoughtful and value everything that happened. 

When Marina turned 13, she had her first crush.  She becomes infatuated with a boy who’s 18, Arash.  He makes her feel special and worthy.  With having her first crush she becomes vulnerable, observant, and happy.  Since her grandmother died she hadn’t had anyone else to connect to until now.  Marina and Arash had meaningful conversations about serious topics and would connect so beautifully.  Once he went missing and Arash’s family found the note of him explaining that he was connected to the Islamic movement against the Shah and most likely dead by now, Marina realizes she had just experienced her first love and another tragedy at a very young age. 

As Marina talks about her experiences in Evin, readers are exposed to cruel realities that are so hard to read because of its absurdity. Marina knew the prison she was going to equaled fear, torture, and death.  During the events that happened in Evin, Marina was forced to be brave and fearless.  She was whipped to the limit and stuck to her guns.  She was proven loyal and logical when the guards demanded information; in which she didn’t tell about her friends because she knew they would only do the same to the others.  She witnessed courtyard shootings with other women in line.  She was then taken away last second by one of the men, Ali and was sentenced to life in jail instead of death.  She then sees her old friend Sarah and finds a bit of comfort in that.  Marina comments on the fact that she’d rather be killed than alive living in the torturing centre of Evin. 

With all of the events Marina is depicted as a good person.  She has been taught respectable morals and values by her grandmother.  She is seen as a confident, curious, caring, sympathetic, and kind girl.  With all the sad experiences she had endured, she constantly relies on God to help her in all situations and puts all her trust in the religion.  Subconsciously, the feelings of neglect and sadness had been dismissed and morphed into times of praying and having faith in God.  Her past had consistently pushed her closer to her religion even if she hadn’t recognized it.  Religion had become a strong relationship that would never leave her in which she probably took comfort in.  The main thing that keeps her going and is a constant theme is religion. 

Quotes

"Tehran always looked innocently beautiful under the deceiving curves of the snow, and although the Islamic regime had banned most beautiful things, it couldn't stop the snow from falling."  (pg.6)

"People never talked about Evin; it was shrouded with fearful silence."

"Maybe this was a place beyond fear, where all normal human emotions suffocated without even a struggle." (pg.7)

"Pain.  I had never experienced anything like it.  I couldn't even have imagined it. 

It exploded inside me like a lightning bolt." (pg.18)

 

"A voice in my head was saying, You're alive, and you don't desrve it." (pg.58)

"My time in this world had ended, but I was still alive.  Maybe this was the line that

seperated life and death.  And I didn't belong to either side." (pg. 86)