Response to Hafizah:
In "Persepolis" Marjane talks about being a prophet and on page 6 she gives 5 reasons why; 1) Her maid does not eat with her family, 2) Her father owns a Cadillac, 3) Her grandmas knees always ache, 4) She has a holy book, and 5) she wants to celebrate Zarathustrain holidays, but those reasons are also why she is an outsider in her town. Not many people in her town drive Cadillacs or own maids or claim they're the next prophet. On page 12 she talks about how her parents bought her books to enlighten her, books about children from Palestine to books about Fidel Castro and even Karl Marx. This shows that she is also very well educated about the outside world and not oblivious of her surroundings. She also tries to be an insider of her culture by supporting the demonstrations and wanting to be part of it, pages 14-17 she over hears her parents talking about the cinema burning down and that there is going to be another demonstration, she goes into her parents room saying she wants to go too.
Most of my life I have felt like an outsider. I grew up in Cicero, IL where the population is mostly made up of Hispanics, I myself is not Hispanic but Sicilian so when growing up I could not really relate to my Hispanic friends, such as jokes they would say or how they were raised, sometimes even the type of food they ate; but as I got older I started to accept that i was different, that i didn't fit in. It wasn't until I i joined my school theatre department that i started to fit in. At the theatre it didn't matter where you came from or how you were raised. All that mattered was your passion for the arts, whether it be music, drawing or acting, if you had a passion for the arts there was a family of friends there to support and help you.
Response to Izzy:
Marjane, a young girl growing up in Iran during a revolution with dreams and hopes that are, not crushed, but simply pushed to the side because of her parents political views. Marjane had dreamed of becoming the last prophet of the Islamic people but with two extremist groups collide she has made the decision to put aside this dream and try to get involved with the demonstrations. Like on page 10, her and her friends play as world communist leaders in their garden, she pays as Che Guevara and her friends are Fidel and Trotsky , they do demonstrations and protests like her parents. Majane also believes the Shah, the king of Iran, to be chosen by god but only cause her teacher and a text book said so. So she also believes everything she is told. On pages 19-25 her father had to explain that he was not chosen by god but put there by the British Empire and they over threw her great grandpa the Emperor of Iran. He also explains when her grandpa tried fighting the king they threw him in jail and tortured him. She then came to realize that these demonstrations and fight was not just about veils but a bigger picture.
I learned at a very young age to not follow the wrong crowd. As I said in my response above, I live in Cicero, a town that is home to 29 different gangs in a 6.5 mile radius, so its not hard to bump into a gang member on the street but at a young age I learned which group to flow with and which groups to stay away from. My thoughts, my decisions, my behavior is all influenced by the friends i hang around with, which were the "nerds" in school, the "theatre kids" and the kids who knew how to have a good time without drugs and alcohol. A good example of how these friends influenced me is, i remember one year during 5th grade, i had a classmate that smoked weed, yes very young age, and i remember we were walking the same way home and he was talking about how cool and fun it would be if i got high with him i told him, trying to fit it, "Yea! Dude, one day.". Of course growing up and seeing the effects it had on my fellow classmates i never tried weed and i never plan on to. I feel that my friends influence my life the most, living in Cicero for 18years and most people don't believe it. haha.
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