Hey 🙂
How’s going this week? I hope all you guys can enjoy your life here!!
Recently, I’ve been reading a graphic-narrative book called Persepolis, which tells Iran history from a child’s viewpoint. The book makes me quite shocked not only from the story it illustrates but also from the social issues related to religion, politics and classes it reveals; in other words, it gives me a chance to discover something underneath the surface but exceptionally important.
Before analyzing and discussing my ideas about the social-class problem revealed in the book, I will share some of my questions about it.
- How did Satrapi illustrate the phenomenon of social classes?
- What’s the effect of the gap between different classes on people?
- Does your social class really determine who you are?
The Letter.
context
At the beginning of the revolution, Mehri, the maid in Marji’s family, fell in love with the neighbor’s son, and their love only based on looking at each other from the window and writing letters. However, unfortunately, Mehri’s “boyfriend”left her after knowing her real identity–a maid rather than a daughter in a upper-class family.
This failed love story impressed me a lot. From the book, we can get that Mehri’s boyfriend didn’t like her at all. In fact, what he really cared about was an identity. He thought she was a daughter from an upper-class family, so he approached her; later, when he knew that the fact was the opposite, he disappeared in her life without a word. The great difference in his attitudes clearly shows that the importance of social class (at that time).
According to Marji’s father’s words, we can tell that in his eyes, the love between two different classes is ridiculous and impossible. But I really wanna ask why he was so confident about its failure?
The Key
Context:
During the wartime, because Iraq had much more advanced weapons than Iran, the latter had to use “quantity” to fight against the former’s “quality”. As a result, many young kids were recruited for the front, and most of them died there. Taking advantage of theses children’s innocence, the government gave each boy a key, which could take him to the “paradise” when he died as a martyr on the battlefield, before he attended the war.
Noticeably, comparing to other pages, most of which take three blocks a tier, this page only has two pictures there. The first one shows bodies of children who had keys around their necks; ironically, meanwhile, Marji and her friends were having a punk rock party in the second picture, and Marji wore a neckless made of nails and chains. During the analyzation in class, I found that my classmates did a great job here, and they also noticed that the first block is bigger than the second one; to some extent, it seems that Marjane wanted to use the organization to stress the difference.
Therefore, I get another question related to the difference shown here: since both Marji with her friends and those “young martyrs” were kids, why their fates were totally different—the latter died on battlefields while the former were enjoying themselves at a party?
With Marjane’s narrative in former chapters, we can find that she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth; in other words, she lived in a social class which was much higher than any other people at that time. Besides, when Marjane illustrated the story, she used an adjective “poor” before those boys chosen to fight for the country. Therefore, in my perspective, the answer to my questions may be closely related to the distinction between social classes.
The movement of care workers from the Third World to First World.
Source: Hochschild’s Love and Gold
In this article, Hochschild talks about women immigrants, who come from the Third World, leave their own children but work as nannies in the First World. Both the huge gap between different classes and its effect can clearly be seen here.
As Hochschild implied: the growing global trend, which made rich nations became richer and poor nations became poorer, resulted in the importation of care and love from poor countries to rich ones. If we treat the whole world as a state, then the First World will certainly be the upper or middle class, while countries in the Third World will represent the lower one. The only reason why the Third World is beaten by the First World is that the latter has a strong strength in wealth. Hence,people in the First World can easily achieve their aims or interests by exploiting the lower class.
For women in the Third World, they have to leave their own children to provide a better life for the family, but what really makes the whole matter become ironical is that they work as nannies in the First World and offer all their love to other people’s children rather than theirs. Why do these women leave their country? The answer, of course, is that they need money to survive in the society. If we think about it deeper, we may also ask: what makes them cannot make a living in their own country? Why there’s such a huge difference in wages between the two Worlds?
Again and again: the effect of social classes.
Fates of three babies from different classes in America.
By the way, a video here can also confirm my answers.
Think about this question when you watch it: What makes their fates so different, even if they graduated from the same high school?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XM-YcgGWQA
Well, in my opinion, according to backgrounds and wealth they own, all people in this society are divided into different classes, and these classes design different modes of life for them.
People in the upper class, including Marji’s family, with powerful backgrounds or much money, instead of worrying about basic needs for living like people in lower classes, may choose to pursue a higher quality of education or more political rights; in other words, they can completely control their lives. In some cases, to achieve their interests, the upper class can even manipulate and exploit the lower class. However, no matter how tightly are bound by the former, the latter hardly try to change the situation because of their absolute weakness in many aspects.
As a result, when the society becomes unrest, people in the lower class will definitely be sacrificed by people in the upper class who can take advantage of their strengths both in economy and politics to protect themselves. The story sounds sad but true, and I guess that’s the reason why kids at the same age in the same society usually have surprisingly different fates. Just like the key around every poor boy’s neck means a better life while Marji’s necklace is just for fun.
Thanks for reading.
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