Denitza's Week 2+3

Hello peers! Sorry for this delay. But this will only mean that this post will be pretty long, because it will contain all my ideas, thoughts and everything that everybody said in week 2 + 3.

1) In Class.

During these two week we did many important discussions. We began (week 2) with question discussions. My question was;
To what extent are people a product of their place and time?
I answered this question by splitting Satrapi's life into 2. The first part of her life is in Iran andn the second in Austria. I talked about how the protagonist and the people around her are affected because of their time and place.
For ex. Marji was taught in school (her daily surrounding) to love the king, yet her parents are against him (19). This confuses our protagonist on which side is correct to follow.
As time passes, rules change and people have to follow different things and change their surroundings and way of thought (like 1984, forces people to change their way of thinking, or another way said would be, doublethink). For ex. when Marjane tells her partner that it was weird how the teacher said one thing about the Shah and now changed her mind and told them to rip the pages out (memory hole, 1984. Losing all sorts of infomation that might bring up a memory) proving that the surroundings of Marjane confuse her, according to what was happening at the time (44).
It isnt until Marjane is Austria when she realizes who she is and what she feels and wants to follow. An ex. would be page 197, she finally found out who she really is. The fact that she exclaims the she is and "Iranian and proud of it", proves that the place where you have lived does affect your character.
I was happy to hear from my other two companions (Bhanesha and Lucy) and their ideas and realizations about persepolis connecting to their questions, because that gave me a wide variety of knowledge in different parts of the book.

*We continued with further discussing 3 points;
a. Marjane's parent's want to be religious modernists.
b. Heroes are always men.
c. Mr. McGuigan: Marjane is a hero behind a veil.

*We also taked about questions you can ask yourself while reading Persepolis;
a. How could you be more then your parts?
b. What you say +what you do, which one dictates who you are?
c. Is it fiction or non-fiction?
d. How does the drawing help you understand the concept and theme?

***

Next week (week3) we discussed perspectives in which you can write literature. They were;
-Feminism
-Racism
-Markism
-Religious fundamentalist
-Confusion reading
-Hollywood producer
-Mr.McGuigan's perspective
-Marchiavellian
-New Critism

We mostly focused on grammar (semi-colons and colons). I found it extremely helpful, because I know how unwell I use punctuation.

*Semi-colon
--> Between 2 independant clauses that mirror each other, but arent really connected.
--> Provides a further explanation and seperates multiples independant clauses.
--> Used to also replace a period before a connecting word (ex. indeed, anyways) with a comma after the connecting word.

*Colons
--> Used for a list, or implify or extend an idea. (colon words ex. likewise, therefore, etc.)

2) Things Mr.McGuigan said.

For both, week 2 and 3, Mr.McGuigan let the class teach each other and bounce off ideas off one another. I find this useful because that way we learn different perspectives that we might not have noticed but someone else has. The snippets and the discussions we have in class are very productive. There were somethings that I think are important to remember, which Mr. McG said;

*Simple drawings=anyone in the world

*More detailed drawings=more unlike you

*Writting from a different point of view illuminates your style of analysation.

*Tuning your guitar properly to make your show go smoothly= strong introduction.

(Think before you do.)

*The SUPER COMMA

*New Vocab--> recalcitrant= stubbernly unco-operative.

--> extentialism=people create their own meaning. (philosophy)

3) Literary Feature Hunt.

pg. 102

~Juxtaposition between both photos. The people in the panel are not given a face (this could mean the lower class because of the ironic idea of the golden key), they are censored, meaning they can be anyone.

pg. 116

~Great way to present imagery, because the battlefield that we see is what Satrapi the child is thinking in her head. We would think, why a child would be thinking of such horrid things? Well if we go back to the question 'to what extent are people a product of their place and time' we would realize that because of Marjane's surroundings (ex. parents) and the time that she lived, her personality is set this way.

~ I found it interesting that there was a door at the bottom of the page. I think that this door represents freedom, freedom to flee out of this war. This is foreshadowing to when Satrapi gets sent of to Austria. Geneva thought that the door meant entering childhood. I also partly agree with her due to the pursue of the story on page 117.

pg. 181

~Satrapi uses metaphorto express her idea and thought into the image. The image is juxtaposed due to her day dreaming about what the mother is talking about and the connection between her and Marjane. The angle of the shot is very important because it limits the reader from seeing the people sitting at the table. This could also have been done purposely because, like Mr.McG said, little detail means that it can be anyone in Iran, sitting close to the caspean sea.

pg. 189

~Allusion to superhero. She is growing up and changing through hyperbole. This panel reminds me of the hulk, but the statement 'Heroes are always men' keep coming back to me and I just can not accept Marjane as a hero in this panel, but more like as a weird allusion of her years of puberty.

4) Snippets.

pg. 71

-> She lost her religion for kicking God out.

-> Just emptiness. Very extential moment.

-> She isn't there, her bedroom is gone. She can't hold onto anything.

-> There is less white in each panel (starting from pg. 70-71), presenting how she is loosing herself and that she can not understand what is really happening around her. I think that the reason she is lost is because she is in a great depression here, due to her uncle's execution.

-> This connects to 1984, when Winston was also falling into space, because he too was in a depression for not having any freedom. He was lost too.

pg. 185

-> There is a great party going on in the room, but Marji is completely lonely and fearful because she is not used to this type of environment. Through the eyes of the character, Marjane is telling us that she isnt belonging.

-> This panel can be presented as an indirect and direct presentation.

->The author has placed Iranian art work (ex. wall, carpet, smoke) around the room to illuminate how much Satrapi was missing Iran at that moment.

pg. 156 (last 3 panels)

-> Examines the difference in social structures and the contrast of how girls are set to think according to their surroundings.

-> The last 3 panels show the difference in the text, as well as the graphics. Marji is dressed in dark colored clothing the Zozo's daughter, showing the difference between societies. The background is white, just like Zozo's daughter, telling us that Satrapi is in a different society.

gabe's week 2 snippets

the panel on page 178 portrays marji being thrown out of the nunnery by the head nun. This is a long panel that spans from one side of the page to the other and breaks from satrepi's standard 4cm by 6 cm panel. this panel seems elongated with the head nun and marji on opposite sides. The nun sits at a large empty table with the painting of the last supper above her head. with the twelve desiples around jesus visible and the nun sitting at an empty but large table, it feels as though the nun is breaking somthing important about the teachings of her prophet.

gabe's week 2 literary feature hunt.

The one panel on page 185 depicts marjane at her first party in Austria. She sits alone in the corner staring at the reader. The text talks about the difference between parties in iran and those in Austria. As well, a panel before it talks about pink floyd being played and how such a genre couldnt be played at an up beat iranian party. the smoke wafting up from the spliffs of the party goers is in a style resembling the art of her native iran. This is a contrast of the high iranian culture and what seems to her as almost barbaric western culture.

gabe's week 2 feedback

Through out Thursday's class, it seemed that culture was the thing that Marjane kept reminding herself of while in Austria. Iran has such a rich and old culture that for her, the impersonality and displacement of culture and history in Austria must have created a gap in her heart that she filled with the luxuries of western society, like drugs. Even the supposed rebels of Austria, the punks, were artificial and out of touch with culture of any kind.

week two class act

I am certainly realizing that there are more important parts to an english and socials assignment than there are fingers on my hands (and i have a lot of fingers). Does anyone else think that a list is in order? I understand that such a holy list could never be brought in to a final, but it seems that omitting one is the source of my constant annoyance and dismay, especially with the 1984 presentation. If i had my pick, follow instructions would be number one on such a list.

gabe's persepolis snippets hunt

on page 18, panels three and four show the army and protesters in standoffs, except she splits the panels in to two. instead of having one scene on which there is a demonstration turned violent, there are two panels each with the caption matching the picture even through the caption for the two panels is one sentence. this format appears on page 41 panels two and three where a sentence has two ideas and two panels to hold it in.

gabe's persepolis lit. feature hunt week one

on page 40, the third panel, it says "the end of the shah's reign was near." This panel struck me because i couldn't figure out who in the panel was pushing the shah. After looking at the panel above it that talked about the massacres, it told me that it was the ghosts pushing shah out. This metaphor is effective because it exclaims that it wasn't just the people pushing the shah out of Iran, it was the memories or the reaction against the shah that was fueling the revolution. though this metaphor rests on the fact that i cant identify who is pushing the shah.

gabriel's week one feedback

mr macuiggan said during Thursday's class that one of the driving questions behind our study of persepolis is the question "what drives us to tell our stories?". my first anwer to this question was "because our stories should be told". as an elaboration, i have a sense that there is something inside people that wants to share the stories of what shaped the course of our lives. maybe the reason behind our drive is that we want to help people by telling them our mistakes and our triumphs. Maybe Marjane is trying to help people refine their reactions to extreme oppressive sosieties and help people better rebel against them. telling stories is trying to help people in a way familiar to the teller.

gabe's persepolis class act

Everything that was said by miss Brownrigg was so important to the study of this graphic novel. she has laid the basis for everything we must learn about how to analyze a graphic novel. Also important about what she said was the literary features specific to graphic novels.

Interesting Connection-Denitza.

HAPPY MARCH EVERYBODY! :)
So yester I was thinking about how everything we have learned connects and I think that the past novels and Persepolis are connected in 2 ways; one being the fact that the protagonist always censors semething of his. For ex. in Twelfth Night, Viola disguises herself as a boy. In 1984, Winston is censoring his feelings and thoughts. And in Persepolis, Marjane is hidden under her veil. The second way all these novels are connected are by minority, either as a woman (Persepolis and Twelfth Night) or as human (1984).