Persepolis

After watching Persepolis, I can’t decide if I wish I had watched it at the beginning of the semester, or if I’m glad that I waited until the end. Had I watched it at the beginning of the semester, it would have helped me with a lot of the novels that we have read. I didn’t know too much about the Iranian Revolution going into the semester, so I spent a good bit of time researching the topic. Persepolis does a nice job of giving a description of the events that took place in Iran. Yet, having watched it at the end of the semester, I was able to make a lot of connections with the novels that we have read. For instance, the scene in the movie where Marji is describing the end of the Revolution where prisoners were given the chance to swear their allegiance or be executed reminded me of a similar scene in The Bathhouse. Another scene that stood out was when Marji got caught holding hands with her boyfriend and her father had to pay a fine to bail her out. He says to her that when he was fifteen, he used to walk hand in hand with her mother, but the times have changed and that is no longer allowed. Mohsen and Zunaira also longed for the time when they could walk hand in hand down the street in The Swallows of Kabul.  The scenes where Marji was sitting in the classroom under the strict supervision of the female teacher contrasted with the scenes of her walking down the street with her friends reminded me of the contrast between Kambili’s life under the watchful eye of her father and her time spent with Amaka and Aunt Ifeoma. Whether it be at the beginning or the end of the semester, I can definitely see the merit in watching this movie as part of a class on Post-Colonial Literature.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I sat down to watch the movie. I hadn’t read any reviews or even the synopsis of the film. I was a little surprised to see that it was an animated film. After having watched it, I found out that it was the autobiographical story of Marjane Satrapi and her time growing up in Iran. I think that using animation really was a brilliant move on her part. Had I been told I was going to watch a movie about a girl growing up in Iran during the Iranian Revolution, I probably would have zoned out halfway through. I think for many Americans, we just don’t know enough about Iran (perhaps care enough would be the more appropriate term) to get involved in a movie about a girl growing up in Iran. My curiosity got the best of me in the beginning, and it didn’t take long for me to get hooked. Stylistically, the black and white images add to the gloom surrounding Marji for much of the movie. It seems as though it only switches to color when she’s about to embark on a new beginning and she has a little bit of hope in her life. Of course, that never lasts long for Marji, and soon we’re right back to black and white.

Marji turns to her grandmother whenever she gets lost in the world. She always has advice to give, but it never comes off as preachy. This is probably due to grandma’s innate ability to throw in a penis joke whenever things are about to get too serious. She was definitely my favorite character. For as much as this was a movie about a girl growing up during the Iranian Revolution, it just as easily could have been about an American girl growing up in the city. The film does a great job showing the similarities between our cultures. Teenagers are teenagers all across the world. They all deal with angst and a sense of rebellion. They’re just looking for their place in the world. Persepolis does a great job showing that we are all a lot more similar than we are different.

Modern African Poetry

While I will be the first to admit that poetry is my least favorite part of being an English teacher (I’d rather teach grammar), I must say that I could see the value of using this as a way to incorporate some African literature into my classroom. I think that a lot of these poems are easily accessible to a secondary student. The ones that I chose to look at were: “Not Standing Still” by Niyi Osundare, “Departure” by Don Mattera, “The Bar-stool Edible Worm” by Dambudzo Marechera, “Tarantula” by Musaemura Bonas Zimunya, and “In the Fist of Your Hatred” by Gwendoline Konie.

Throughout each of the poems, there were some common feelings of fatigue and anger. I think that these are representative of the feelings that would have been felt living under Colonialist rule. For example, “Not Standing Still” starts by saying “I grew weary of the tyranny of water/ and spat in the sea/ I grew weary of the power of the sun/ and lit candles at noon.” Both lines show the futility of fighting back against a greater power which is why in the closing lines the narrator talks about “calling his father’s name.”

In “Departure,” the narrator speaks of “growing tired and wanting to leave the city.” In the second stanza, the poet shifts tense and speaks of “sleeping the sleep of freedom” under the banks of the Nile. I read that Don Mattera was placed under house arrest for his political activities. I could imagine that that would be inspiration enough for anyone to dream of being set free.

 The narrator in “The Bar-stool Edible Worm” seems to have had enough of everything. He states that he is “Against war and those against/ War.” This sounds like someone grown weary of life and looking for an out. This seems evident in the dark humor of the last line “pass the Castor Oil, Alice.”

In “Tarantula,” we see the narrator talking to the spider that had bitten him in the leg while he was sleeping. He is watching as the legs of the spider finally stiffen in death. The spider has been killed for simply doing what it must in order to survive, much like many men were killed under the Colonialist rule.

“In the fist of Your Hatred” differs from the other poem in that it was written by a female. Konie was accepted politically as well as academically, but she could never escape the repression of being a woman in a male dominated sphere. The “tight grip that smothers her voice and mind with its brutal grip” symbolizes the male voices that fought against her success.

One of the things that struck me as a read through many of these poems searching for the ones that I would discuss was the raw emotions that seemed to dominate so many of them. It wasn’t difficult to pick out the anger and pain that came through in the poets’ words. I definitely think that this is a great way to begin a discussion on post-colonialism in the high school classroom. These poems could be a great launch point for a longer unit containing one of the novels that we have this semester.

Omeros

Wow, where to begin. To say that Omeros is one of the most complex pieces of literature that I have ever read would be an understatement. There is just so much going on in this poem that it is difficult to unpack it all. I teach a class titled Classics, and I do think that this would fit in nicely. I teach The Iliad in that class and I have taught The Odyssey in it before as well. In that class, I have my students do a webquest on Greek and Roman culture, and I think it would be fun to try to create a webquest using Omeros as your guide. It could be a way to try to cover as many topics as possible. The reality is that you could teach this poem ten years in a row and never focus on the same topic. That being said, I think it would be difficult to teach to a high school classroom because they simply don’t have the background information to get all of the references. If I were to teach this in in my Classics class, I would have to lose a lot of the material I already teach and insert some other things so that the class could culminate with Omeros. I would start by teaching The Iliad, because that seems like the one that smacks you in the face right away with Hector and Achilles being the main characters fighting over Helen. There are obvious references throughout the poem. I also think it would be beneficial to teach The Odyssey because Achilles spiritual journey to the past is, in essence, an odyssey of sorts. Then I would probably teach Dante’s Inferno, so that the students can understand the precedent set for Walcott to insert himself into the text as both narrator and character. The students would have to also know a bit of history to cover the colonialism that is represented through the relationship of Major Plunkett and his wife Maud, as well as the colonization of the Island and the history of the slave trade, because although none of the characters in the story have personally experienced slavery, it is a large part of their collective pasts. If we really want to get inclusive, it wouldn’t hurt to teach The Wasteland also because it is also one of the few major modern epic poems to compare Omeros with. This doesn’t even cover the symbolisms, metaphors, and characteristics of epic poetry that would need to be taught as well. While I can ultimately understand why Omeros is such a masterpiece, I am not sure how easily it could be incorporated into the high school classroom.

 

Tsotsi

Tsotsi is a man without a past and seemingly no future. He lives in the present, with his only goal being to survive the day. So many times, throughout the novel, he is described as not being able to recognize himself. In seeing his reflection in a shop window, he states “he recognized nothing except the shape of a man” (107). Part of Tsotsi not being able to remember his past is intentional, almost a survival mechanism. Whenever thoughts of his past came up, he tried his best to repress them. It is also the reason why he hated when people asked him questions about his past, he simply didn’t know the answers. Tsotsi is the Afrikaan word for a thug or a hoodlum. It is a persona that Tsotsi adopts to help him survive. It is something that he wears like a shield. He fed off the fear others had for him: “the big men, the brave ones, stood down because of him, the fear was of him, the hate was for him. It was all there because of him. He knew he was” )7). To Tsotsi, fear equaled respect.

Yet, Tsotsi’s carefully crafted defenses came crashing down the night he attempted to rape a woman and ended up stealing her baby instead. Seeing the helpless child in the shoebox, something started to change in Tsotsi. Flashes of memories that were always bubbling just below the surface suddenly boiled over and started to flood his mind. Images of “the yellow bitch” and his mother came crashing back. Suddenly, Tsotsi started to feel again. He sees Die Aap as a person and not just some muscle that he used to work people over. He tries to reconcile with Boston after savagely beating him. He finds a woman to feed the baby after his attempts fail. He spares the life of the crippled beggar. He goes to a church in an attempt to understand God. And ultimately, he sacrifices himself in an effort to save the baby from the crews sent to raze the ruins where Tsotsi had hidden him.

The baby, who Tsotsi had named David, after himself, seems representative of Tsotsi’s own rebirth. In the absolute squalor of Sophiatown, Fugard sets out to show us that hope can be found anywhere. When Tsotsi’s crew murders Gumboot in the beginning of the novel, Tsotsi whispers in Gumboot’s ear an obscene reference to his mother because “A moment of hate at the last, he had learnt, disfigured the face in death” (12). Contrast that with the description of Tsotsi in death at the end of the novel: “All agreed that his smile was beautiful…it was hard to believe what the back of his head looked like when  you saw the smile” (226). It is clear that Tsotsi has found peace in sacrificing himself for another.