At first I got the book “Persepolis”, I was surprised, because this is the first time a comic book is required as a textbook. Actually, I love reading comic book, so, immediately, Persepolis evoked my interest. Then I explored deeper about this book…

The background is set in 1980, under the Iran-Iraq War and revolution. The author Satrapi used two perspective, the main character, Marji and the narrator Marjane to convey ideas. On the first hand, using Marji to create the main string, in the eye of a child, on the other hand while the narrator Marjane is providing supplement to the story. Personally, I am impressed by this kind of genre. Unlike those comic book I read before, they usually use the firs person angle. As a matter of fact, they’ve never use two aspect throughout the whole book, which makes the book less idea-voluminous

Moreover, the role of Marji, in my opinion, is very colorful. Marji’s brain is full of fantasy. She love western culture. She always dreams to talk to god and be the last prophet. However, in the eyes of conservative Iran women, marji is quite a symbol of western corruption and her mother and grandmother have no idea to “correct” her idea. Evidently, this part can connect to the “global citizen” concept, which is Multi-culture should be accepted. Actually, Marji is actually a good demonstration of global citizen, because she did not resist foreign culture and turn back to stereotype under people’s judgement. For more specific example, we can look at the “veil” chapter, every women are required to wear veil. After Marji’s mother has been taking photo in the street demonstration and the photo has been published, she dyed her hair and wore sunglasses for a long time. Although, the publisher is forbidden to publish people’s picture without the person’s permission, in my eye, this is a kind of loss of identity, because she was not willing to be recognized by other. However, Marji was looking forward to take part in demonstration since she was child but her parent did not allow her to. Obviously, the contrast can verify the point.

Beside, I found that the style of those pictures are impressive, not only just because it is black and white, but also I found tremendous metaphors and symbolizations. Despite of those we have talked about in class, I found numbers of them as well. The most important one is the imagine of god in page 13.The appearance of god is in mostly white with some simple black curve, and the background is completely black. It gave me a strong contradiction between black and white. It did conveyed that god is very holy and important to Marji. Secondly, I discover that sizes of imagines are various accordingly. Such as pages 42, 95, 116, the author used a entire page for picture, and the event or story in that page is actually more important than others. In a word, the significance of the event and the idea the author tried to convey can be reflected from the size of the imagine.

While I was exploring deeper, I found a movie edition of Persepolis: The subtitle is in my mother language and I found there are some slight difference in between. The languages used in the movie is interesting and the action of those characters are more vivid. Unfortunately, there is no free english subtitle edition. For those who are really interesting, you can pay for it.

To be honest, I don’ have anything valuable to write on my first blog, so I can just talk about my feeling after class. Now I just have a vague idea about university essay writing, which is, in my opinion, very complicated. In my high school life, even international school, I have no idea about university essay writing, let alone genre, skills of citation, or any things else we have learned in class. At that time, we don’t need to communicate with previous scholars and we don’t need to find the gap of knowledge, which is a possible reason of essay written in high school remains in highs school. However, as we stepped in to a higher level of education, we need to master this skills.

Actually before the ASTU, I know a kind of format of writing, called APA style. It is most common format in psychology essay in USA and it is required in my nowadays psychology essay writing as well. APA has its way to title and cite. I don’t have a specific idea because I didn’t get that far, but I believe APA style will share some similarities with the style we are learning. In senior high school, we just need a clear frame, appropriate support of your views and enough word number. Since there are so many differences, I realize the important of having this class.

Most importantly, we need a unified format of essay to provide knowledge for the further student in standard way, so that they can explore more on the base of our ideas. Then I thought about citation. Undoubtedly, the knowledge of previous scholar should be protected, that is the reason way we need to have citations.  Moreover, we do need the list of references to find out the reliability and sources of your evidence. Abstract can give readers a brief introduction of what you are doing immediately. Lastly, communication to the previous scholars and find the gaps of konwledge is the most essential part, because we are standing at giants’ shoulder so that we can explore something new. The gist of research is to find out the insufficiency or the improvable parts so that we can contribute to that, and that is what communication can help with.

Because the lesson have just begun, my opinions may be very superficial. As we are getting deeper, maybe I can come up something with depth. One last thing, in the APA style, I don’t know why we need a entire blank paper just for writing down title and author, is that environmental? haha.

If you are taking psych and you want to know more about APA, here is the link. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/.

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