Hello Readers!

It is a bittersweet return to university, leaving family behind (in Toronto for me), seeing your friends again and dealing with sad yet important material in class. We have begun our second term with a study of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. It tells the story of a young boy named Oskar Schell who discovers a key in his recently deceased father’s closet. He goes on a quest across the boroughs of New York searching for the lock the mysterious key will open. It is a heartbreaking story of loss, love and healing. Within the story, tragedies echo one another as Oskar’s grandparents narrate their trauma and loss following the Dresden fire bombings in WWII and Oskar narrates his life as he deals with his trauma following the death of his father in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There were so many great blog posts and many diverse interpretations of Foer’s novel. If I could I would gladly explore all these themes and topics but I sadly do not have the time or space to do so in this class blog. Therefore I have chosen to focus on a couple student blogs that stood out to me, as well as focus on the grand theme of loss in this class blog post.

Image taken by me of p.303 of Foer’s novel. It depicts the key that Oskar found in his father’s closet. It is on a string and he carries it around his neck for most of the novel.

A blog post that really caught my attention was Joseph’s. He related the storyline of the novel to the Beatle song references within the novel. It was completely different than any of the other blogs I had read and dealt with a concept not previously addressed. He examined specific Beatle’s songs (and lyrics) mentioned in the novel as they “frame[d] the stages of the narrators’ development over the course of the book.” It was an analyses that really surprised me at first, but upon closer reading was well thought out, well presented and clever. At the end, he tied grandmother’s, grandfather’s, Oskar’s mom and Oskar’s grief and pain together with the modified lyrics “Remember to let [Mom, Grandma, Grandpa] into your heart, then you can start to make it better” from “Hey Jude.” It perfectly captures Oskar’s need and his grandparents need to let others into their life who have also known great loss. Oskar fiercely sees his loss as “mine” (Foer, 256) and therefore has trouble letting others in, especially his mother. His grandparents cannot seem to cope with the tragedies that have occurred in their lifetimes. They cannot let each other in and, as Mia talks about in her blog, they create “Nothing” and “Something” spaces to enable them to live together (Foer, 110).

While Joseph’s blog examined song lyrics, a large number of bloggers (including Ryan, Isaiah, Olivea, Paolina, Jackson, Alex, Kate, Elizabeth, Martin, Erin, Grace, Mia) discussed various aspects of the themes of loss, trauma, absence and coping with loss. Another blog post that stood out to me was Isaiah’s because of the eloquent way he expressed these themes. He focused on the coping mechanisms of Thomas Sr. (Oskar’s grandfather) and Oskar. Discussing grandfather’s loss of speech and Oskar’s desperate search for “some sort of closure.”

Image taken by me of p.262 from Foer’s novel. It is a visual representation of how Thomas Sr. uses daybooks to communicate when he loses his ability to speak. His use of “I’m sorry” (since it is repeated several times in the novel) demonstrates his pain and sorrow towards all those he lost. To me it seems as if he is sorry for having lost those he did and he is sorry for the life he has lived.

Other bloggers, such as Mia and Joseph also touched upon the various coping mechanisms of the characters, such as grandfather’s lack of speech, grandmother’s apparently “crummy” eyes (Foer, 307) and Oskar’s search, as well as his anxiety. Isaiah discussed grandfather’s defeat when faced with grief and tragedy. He “became the shell of a man and removed himself from the world emotionally.” I had not associated his coping with defeat before but when I read this blog it truly resonated with me. His life is such a tragedy and he lacked the will to live after he suffered the great loss of Anna and his unborn child in the Dresden fire bombings. This analyses made me think about the contrast created in the novel between Thomas Sr. and Oskar’s coping mechanisms. While Thomas Sr. is defeated, Oskar, even with all his grief and pain, still somehow continues to live. His life has changed: he has “heavy boots” (Foer, 2), appears to suffer from PTSD and has many fears, yet he still searches for the lock. He is still curious about the world and is present in his life. Life is not as it used to be before “the worst day” (Foer, 11) but at least Oskar still tries to live a life.

Joseph’s analysis of the Beatles songs, Isaiah’s (along with other bloggers) presentation of coping mechanisms and the bloggers’ personal reactions (in their analyses and opinions in most blog posts this week) to Foer’s novel demonstrate to me the connection that forms between people who have suffered great loss in their lives.Tragedy brings people together and together people may be able to find healing and find life again. As terrible as tragedy is, it makes you appreciate life so much more. As Isaiah puts it, “[y]ou can’t truly appreciate something special until you’ve lost something special” and as Elizabeth puts it, “we should always let the ones close to us know just how much we care about them” because death can “take away a loved one in a blink of an eye.”

Thank you for reading!

Sincerely,

Clara

References (not hyper-linked in the text)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to start off by saying that the blogs I read this week were great!

An overwhelming majority of them either discussed, used as inspiration or commented on Persepolis: story of a childhood by Marjane Satrapi. This graphic memoir is told from the perspective of Marji, a young girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. Therefore I will be examining a few of the major themes that appear throughout several student’s blog’s relating to Persepolis. They are: how Persepolis is related to personal experiences, how Persepolis can make the War in Iran seem real and relatable, and how the comic book genre adds a whole new dimension to the events described in the book.

When reading a book, any book (not only Persepolis), readers can often find connections between themselves and what is being described in the book. I think there is something so important about these connections. They help you better understand the book as well as the events unfolding around you. Quite a large number of people (Isaiah, Olivea, Paolina, Therese, Martin, Gabriel, Melissa, Baris, Inneke) touched upon this idea of connections between themselves, the world right now and the events and characters in Persepolis in their blogs.

In her blog, Paolina, relates her mother’s volunteer work as a German teacher in a refugee shelter to Marji’s very personal account of everyday life. She explains that refugees in present day Europe, as well all the people affected by the events in Persepolis are real people that have fears, joys and life experiences. When a child Paolina‘s mother worked with said, “I have seen worse,”after bloodying both his knees, it makes you think twice about the effects war has on children. It makes you think about what Marji and all those other children in Iran went through.

Photo of the 4th panel, page 18, from Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Photo taken by me.

Both Martin and Baris relate Persepolis back to personal experiences. Martin, in his blog post, talks about his friend Sep and her mother’s experience growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. On an even more personal level, in his blog post, Baris describes his experience growing up in Turkey when protests broke out against the government. His description of how his mother went out to help the wounded, along with her concern for his life when he was out protesting is immensely touching. It echoes the relationship between Marji and her parents when she wanted to go out protesting and they feared for her safety (for example, see page of 16-17 from Persepolis). When Baris mentioned that he would see his mother and her partner come home in the evenings exhausted, that immediately made me think about the 4th panel on page 18 of Persepolis, where Marji asks her parents to play Monopoly and her mother replies, “Darling, we are tired.” (see photo). It is a powerful image. These experiences do not just happen to people far away, they can happen to us and to anyone. This image and this reality really hits close to home.

Another important idea to consider is how connections can be drawn between the everyday experiences of Marji as a child in Persepolis and the life of children outside of Iran. Olivea expresses her thoughts, in her blog, on what it means for a child to realize that their parents are human beings too. 

Image of bottom panels, page 52, from Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Taken from Olivea’s blog post (http://blogs.ubc.ca/oliveabellastu/).

She points out this moment for Marji, at the bottom of page 52. Marji can be seen walking in the street, with the caption, “My father was not a hero, my mother wanted to kill people… so I went out to play in the street”. Any kid comes to this realization at some point in their lives.

Finally, the importance of the comic book genre and its style was discussed by many people (Alex, Ryan, Gabriel, Maria). Alex and Gabriel mention the deliberate choice of the comic book genre. How the genre can be somewhat informal and that such a format really engages the reader. Alex and Ryan both talk about the importance of the visual aspect of Persepolis. Ryan comments on the simple style of the drawings, along with the use of the colour black (representing darkness and sad times) to draw attention to the message of the story, rather than just the images. Gabriel adds to this notion by discussing how Marjane Satrapi sometimes uses contrast between the words of the story and the images, which make her work more accessible and easier to understand. Maria uses the word “powerful” when talking about the images in Persepolis. I think it embodies perfectly the visual impact the images have.

Before signing off on this class blog, I want to mention how positive everyone’s opinions were of the book. Everyone in the class comes from different cultures and places, and yet a lot of people mentioned that they gained a more positive view of Iran after reading this book. Both Mia and Erin talk about western media as painting Iran in a very negative light. This is where the idea of global citizenship comes in. As Erin puts it, “A citizen of the world must push the boundaries of their own nationality and seek to discover the views of other peoples and places.” This is exactly what people in this class are doing by reading Persepolis and really taking the time to think about these issues. Step by step and day by day, we are becoming global citizens. Olivea sums up all these various ideas and topics perfectly: “I think the fact that we can connect to Satrapi’s experiences makes her story even more powerful. It makes us stop and think about just how different we aren’t.”

Thank you for reading and see you next week!

Clara

Sources (other than the student blogs, who have hyperlinks on their names):

Persepolis: The story of a childhood by Marjane Satrapi