Questions answered by Kristine Knutter, Youth Programs Coordinator for PTPI.
6. Life in the Islamic Republic as described by Nafisi was burdened with censorship, fear and anti-west propaganda. Discuss how this affects individuals and societies collectively.
The author Azar Nafisi was extremely frustrated with a leftist Marxist organization, which included her student Mahtab. The group felt that “focusing on women’s rights was individualist and bourgeois and played into their (the government) hands.” However, Nafisi and other women knew that women’s problems were very real. Not only women prostitutes were being stoned to death. Nafisi’s former school principal was accused of “corruption on earth, sexual offenses and violation off the decency of morality.” The accusations were not because of lewd actions but because she was the minister of education. For this, she was either stoned or shot to death.
One of my favorite quotes is by Edmund Burk and follows, “No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
I think that Azar Nafisi and her closest female students demonstrated defiance and courage in an environment in which fear and the morality police ran rampant. Both publicly and privately they engaged in rebellions acts such as allowing strands of hair to show from beneath their chador. In addition to publicly protesting the Government’s role in degrading women’s rights, Nafisi engaged in her personal passion of incessant reading and writing. (It’s clear she wasn’t reading religious texts but rather; chose texts she most enjoyed.) She wrote on page 112, “I felt a silent defiance that may also have shaped my public desire to defend a vague and amorphous entity I thought of as myself.” I think Nafisi showed great courage in holding onto her individual values despite the potential consequences.
8. Did you find any parallels between the characters in the book and your own life? What kind of parallels or lessons did you learn from the book?
One of the lessons that I learned from this book are that if you are passionate about something, you can use your own unique talents to make a difference. In addition, one must allow themselves to feel pan to better deal with tragedy.
Nafisi details how the American-British author Henry James was not able to physically participate in World War I because of a back injury though he supported and aided the British through writing letters. In one of his letters to a friend whose husband was killed he wrote, “Feel, feel, I say—feel for all you’re worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live, especially to live at this terrible pressure, and the only way to honour and celebrate these admirable beings who are our pride and our inspiration.”
I think that when people experience tragedy it can be difficult to allow themselves to feel pain. It’s hard to think clearly and learn from experiences if we don’t allow ourselves this experience. While I cannot imagine trying to allow yourself to feel pain for all of the tragedies that unfold while your country is in a conflict, I still feel it’s a better alternative than allowing yourself to become numb or act out violently. Nafisi writes, “Feeling would stir up empathy and would remind them that life was worth living.”
The opinions expressed by PTPI staff and other book club members are entirely their own and are not necessarily the views of People to People International or that of PTPI’s Officers, Board of Directors and Board of Trustees.
