Going Beyond the Historical Moment
Courtney A. Cannon
I am still interested in the topic we discussed last week about crafting a story with style, and I see how style choices can bring a different dimension to, or elicit a new level of understanding and emotional connection/ reaction from the reader, when it comes to writing a piece set in a particular historical and political moment. The way Nafisi in " The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of" and the way Kar in "Death of Mannegquin" approaches heavy and dark political moments is to connect the human emotion and tangible realities to another, all-be-it, so-called "lighter" topic. A style choice of both Nafisi and Kar in approaching narrating experiences of opppression is to illustrate human psychological and visceral connections to the world around them. For Nafisi, in "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of," she--the protagonist-- copes coming home to a very different "home" by finding a new centering of her identity, and safety not found in the reality around her, through the novels she has read and now teaches. The truths of human experience that can be found and experienced within fictitious works, that the new regime is censoring, is her "light" in the darkness. Nafisi describes the oppressors' reasonings for censoring and redefining the old "home" around her--the reality that the regime pushes is limited, stifling, and dark: "Like all totalitarians, they could not differentiate between reality and imagination, so they attempted to impose their own version of truth upon both life and fiction" (7). Upon Nafisi's return home, she sees a very different reality than what her memories of old consoled her with in her time away. In "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of," life and fiction are pushed into dark confined corners and forbidden from the public square. Nafisi's craft choice to intermingle critique of the new regime with her interpretations of the power of fiction is a strategic and stylistic choice. First, inclusion of the uplifting power of literature in the story balances the dark historical and political climate she is presenting to readers; Secondly, Nafisi is showing how she personally finds light and consolation through reading literature and finding truths of the human experience the outside and opposing regime does not permit in the public reality. Not only does including her analysis of how literature was deeply moving and beneficial to her wholeness during this time, as she presents and critiques political oppression, but literarture is also being used stylistically as a balancing force of light to help the reader connect to the oppressive world she is creating in this story.
Like Nafisi, who uses the object of the book to critique and juxtapose an oppressive regigime, Kar also uses a seemingly light-hearted inanimate and trivial object of the mannequin to shed light upon, and also create maybe a little bit of humor in, the story of "Death Of A Mannequin." Throughout her retelling of her experience when Tehran was at the center of a political and cultural "war zone" she movers her narrative focus or "lens" from the mistreatment of the women to the treatment and metamorphosis of the mannequins' appearance in dress shops. Like Nafisi's connections to objects to transcend her physical realities and the predicament of her homeland, Kar finds phislophial understanding and emotional connection to the gradual transformation of the storefront mannequins as she and her fellow countrywomen inevitably are subsumed into the transformation of Tehran. An example of her style to move from dark topics of political oppression and historical upheaval to lighter concepts of objects symbolizing human experience is as follows:
"These mobile courts would destroy unveiled female mannequins and detain women. Their officials would tear apart the unveiled mannequins and force women to lie down on torture beds to be whipped with dozens of lashes for not wearing the proper Islamic garb" (33). In the same breath--humans experiencing dark times "and" objects symbolizing it-- Kar moves quickly from one to the next. Both Nafisi and Kar present their readership a complex and somber reality of state oppression; however, they strategically craft the narrative of human experience in these dark political times and historical moments, by going beyond the negative and juxstoposing these heavy themes with light, hope and humor--the object of the book and the mannequin.
I am still interested in the topic we discussed last week about crafting a story with style, and I see how style choices can bring a different dimension to, or elicit a new level of understanding and emotional connection/ reaction from the reader, when it comes to writing a piece set in a particular historical and political moment. The way Nafisi in " The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of" and the way Kar in "Death of Mannegquin" approaches heavy and dark political moments is to connect the human emotion and tangible realities to another, all-be-it, so-called "lighter" topic. A style choice of both Nafisi and Kar in approaching narrating experiences of opppression is to illustrate human psychological and visceral connections to the world around them. For Nafisi, in "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of," she--the protagonist-- copes coming home to a very different "home" by finding a new centering of her identity, and safety not found in the reality around her, through the novels she has read and now teaches. The truths of human experience that can be found and experienced within fictitious works, that the new regime is censoring, is her "light" in the darkness. Nafisi describes the oppressors' reasonings for censoring and redefining the old "home" around her--the reality that the regime pushes is limited, stifling, and dark: "Like all totalitarians, they could not differentiate between reality and imagination, so they attempted to impose their own version of truth upon both life and fiction" (7). Upon Nafisi's return home, she sees a very different reality than what her memories of old consoled her with in her time away. In "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of," life and fiction are pushed into dark confined corners and forbidden from the public square. Nafisi's craft choice to intermingle critique of the new regime with her interpretations of the power of fiction is a strategic and stylistic choice. First, inclusion of the uplifting power of literature in the story balances the dark historical and political climate she is presenting to readers; Secondly, Nafisi is showing how she personally finds light and consolation through reading literature and finding truths of the human experience the outside and opposing regime does not permit in the public reality. Not only does including her analysis of how literature was deeply moving and beneficial to her wholeness during this time, as she presents and critiques political oppression, but literarture is also being used stylistically as a balancing force of light to help the reader connect to the oppressive world she is creating in this story.
Like Nafisi, who uses the object of the book to critique and juxtapose an oppressive regigime, Kar also uses a seemingly light-hearted inanimate and trivial object of the mannequin to shed light upon, and also create maybe a little bit of humor in, the story of "Death Of A Mannequin." Throughout her retelling of her experience when Tehran was at the center of a political and cultural "war zone" she movers her narrative focus or "lens" from the mistreatment of the women to the treatment and metamorphosis of the mannequins' appearance in dress shops. Like Nafisi's connections to objects to transcend her physical realities and the predicament of her homeland, Kar finds phislophial understanding and emotional connection to the gradual transformation of the storefront mannequins as she and her fellow countrywomen inevitably are subsumed into the transformation of Tehran. An example of her style to move from dark topics of political oppression and historical upheaval to lighter concepts of objects symbolizing human experience is as follows:
"These mobile courts would destroy unveiled female mannequins and detain women. Their officials would tear apart the unveiled mannequins and force women to lie down on torture beds to be whipped with dozens of lashes for not wearing the proper Islamic garb" (33). In the same breath--humans experiencing dark times "and" objects symbolizing it-- Kar moves quickly from one to the next. Both Nafisi and Kar present their readership a complex and somber reality of state oppression; however, they strategically craft the narrative of human experience in these dark political times and historical moments, by going beyond the negative and juxstoposing these heavy themes with light, hope and humor--the object of the book and the mannequin.
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