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)