This is a final course paper final. the instruction is two read two books. 850-1000 word!!! Due may 6th, 12pm! (Saturday) I have attached the i

To my parents

I INTRODUCTION

n the second millennium B.C., while the Elam nation was developing a civilization alongside Babylon, Indo-European invaders gave their name to

the immense Iranian plateau where they settled. The word "Iran" was derived from "Ayryana Vaejo," which means "the origin of the Aryans." These people were semi-nomads whose descendants were the Medes and the Persians. The Medes founded the first Iranian nation in the seventh century B.C.; it was later destroyed by Cyrus the Great. He established what became one of the largest empires of the ancient world, the Persian Empire, in the sixth century B.C. Iran was referred to as Persia — its Greek name — until 1935 when Reza Shah, the father of the last Shah of Iran, asked everyone to call the country Iran.

Iran was rich. Because of its wealth and its geographic location, it invited attacks: From Alexander the Great, from its Arab neighbors to the west, from Turkish and Mongolian conquerors, Iran was often subject to foreign domination. Yet the Persian language and culture withstood these invasions. The invaders assimilated into this strong culture, and in some ways they became Iranians themselves.

In the twentieth century, Iran entered a new phase. Reza Shah decided to modernize and westernize the country, but meanwhile a fresh source of wealth was discovered: oil. And with the oil came another invasion. The West, particularly Great Britain, wielded a strong influence on the Iranian economy. During the Second World War, the British, Soviets, and Americans asked Reza Shah to ally himself with them against Germany. But Reza Shah, who sympathized with the Germans, declared Iran a neutral zone. So the Allies invaded and occupied Iran. Reza Shah was sent into exile and was succeeded by his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was known simply as the Shah.

In 1951, Mohammed Mossadeq, then prime minister of Iran, nationalized the oil industry. In retaliation, Great Britain organized an embargo on all exports of oil from Iran. In 1953, the CIA, with the help of British intelligence, organized a coup against him. Mossadeq was overthrown and the Shah, who had earlier escaped from the country, returned to power. The Shah stayed on the throne until 1979, when he fled Iran to escape the Islamic revolution.

Since then, this old and great civilization has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth. This is why writing Persepolis was so important to me. I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists. I also don't want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various

repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten.

One can forgive but one should never forget. Marjane Satrapi Paris, September 2002

CREDITS

Translation of first part of Persepolis: Mattias Ripa

Translation of second part of Persepolis: Blake Ferris

Supervision of translation: Marjane Satrapi and Carol Bernstein

Lettering: Celine Merrien and Eve Deluze

THANKS TO

Anjali Singh

L'Association

David B.

Jean-Christophe Menu

Emile Bravo

Christophe Blain

Guillaume Dumora

Fanny Dalle-Rive

Nicolas Leroy

Matthieu Wahiche

Charlotte Miquel

Amber Hoover

Persepolis, translation copyright © 2003 by L'Association, Paris, France Persepolis 2, translation copyright © 2004 by Anjali Singh

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited,

Toronto.

The Complete Persepolis was originally published in the United States in two separate volumes:

Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Satrapi, Marjane, [date]

[Persepolis, English] The complete Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi.

p. cm. Contains the author's Persepolis (2003) and Persepolis 2 (2004)

eISBN: 978-0-307-51802-6 1. Satrapi, Marjane, [date]—Comic books, strips, etc. I. Satrapi, Marjane, [date]

Persepolis 2. English. II. Title. PN6747.S245P4713 2007

955.05′42092—dc22 [B] 2007060106

www.pantheonbooks.com v3.0

ESSAY (850-1,000-word thesis-driven) Write an essay that makes an argument about a question/theme shared by the two books. The overall purpose of the project is to discover common ground shared among two stories and interpret their significance in terms of understanding childhood trauma, memory, identity, or another overarching theme. Consider what you can learn by integrating experiences from two authors to better understand an important theme in literature.

● Support your thesis using specific examples from both texts. ● Identify a specific audience for your essay, which will, in turn, influence the writing purpose. The

intended audience should include one of the following: ○ Academic and scholarly (may or may have not read the books) ○ Professionals at a teacher’s conference (assume the audience has not read the books) ○ The general public who are interested in world literature (think readers of magazines

such as The Atlantic; assume the audience has not read the books)

USE THIS!

● Thesis: In your essay, use a thesis that takes a stance and offers reasons in support of it. Crucial to any piece of argumentative/interpretive writing is its thesis. The thesis arises from the topic, or subject, on which the writing focuses, and may be defined as follows: A thesis is an idea, stated as an assertion, which represents a reasoned response to a question at issue and which will serve as the central idea of a unified composition. When you compose a thesis statement, think about how it satisfies the following tests:

1. Is it an idea? Does it state, in a complete sentence, an assertion? 2. Does it make a claim that is truly contestable and therefore engaging? 3. Are the terms you are using precise and clear? 4. Has the thesis developed out of a process of reasoning? 5. Can you back up your thesis with specific evidence from the texts?

Book 1: Persepolis by Satrapi

Book 2: A Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong

Praise for A LONG WAY GONE

“Beah…speaks in a distinctive voice, and he tells an important story.” —JOHN CORRY, The Wall Street Journal

“Americans tend to regard African conflicts as somewhat vague events signified by horrendous concepts—massacres, genocide, mutilation—that are best kept safely at a distance. Such a disconnect might prove impossible after reading A Long Way Gone,…a clear-eyed, undeniably compelling look at wartime violence…Gone finds its power in the revelation that under the right circumstances, people of any age can find themselves doing the most unthinkable things.”

—GILBERT CRUZ, Entertainment Weekly

“His honesty is exacting, and a testament to the ability of children ‘to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.’”

—The New Yorker

“This absorbing account…goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare… Told in clear, accessible language by a young writer with a gifted literary voice, this memoir seems destined to become a classic firsthand account of war and the ongoing plight of child soldiers in conflicts worldwide.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Deeply moving, even uplifting…Beah’s story, with its clear-eyed reporting and literate particularity—whether he’s dancing to rap, eating a coconut or running toward the burning village where his family is trapped—demands to be read.”

—LIZA NELSON, People (Critic’s Choice, four stars)

“Beah is a gifted writer…Read his memoir and you will be haunted…It’s a high price to pay, but it’s worth it.”

—MALCOLM JONES, Newsweek.com

“When Beah is finally approached about the possibility of serving as a spokesperson on the issue of child soldiers, he knows exactly what he wants to tell the world…‘I would always tell people that I believe children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.’ Others may

make the same assertions, but Beah has the advantage of stating them in the first person. That makes A Long Way Gone all the more gripping.”

—CAROL HUANG, The Christian Science Monitor

“In place of a text that has every right to be a diatribe against Sierra Leone, globalization or even himself, Beah has produced a book of such self- effacing humanity…A Long Way Gone transports us into the lives of thousands of children whose lives have been altered by war, and it does so with a genuine and disarmingly emotional force.”

—RICHARD THOMPSON, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“It would have been enough if Ishmael Beah had merely survived the horrors described in A Long Way Gone. That he has written this unforgettable firsthand account of his odyssey is harder still to grasp. Those seeking to understand the human consequences of war, its brutal and brutalizing costs, would be wise to reflect on Ishmael Beah’s story.”

—CHUCK LEDDY, The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Beah’s memoir is off the charts in its harrowing depictions of cruelty and depravity. What saves it from being a gratuitous immersion in violence is his brilliant writing, his compelling narrator’s voice, his gift for telling detail…This war memoir haunts the heart long after the eyes have finished the final page.”

—JOHN MARSHALL, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“That Beah survived at all, let alone survived with any capacity for hope and joy at all, is stunning, and testament to incredible courage…That Beah could then craft a memoir like this, in his second language no less, is astounding and even thrilling, for A Long Way Gone is a taut prose arrow against the twisted lies of wars.”

—BRIAN DOYLE, The Oregonian

“Beah writes his story with painful honesty, horrifying detail, and touches of remarkable lyricism…A must for every school collection.”

—RAYNA PATTON, VOYA

“A Long Way Gone is one of the most important war stories of our generation…Ishmael Beah has not only emerged intact from this chaos, he has become one of its most eloquent chroniclers. We ignore his message at our peril.”

—SEBASTIAN JUNGER, author of The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea

“This is a beautifully written book. Ishmael Beah describes the unthinkable in calm, unforgettable language.”

—STEVE COLL, author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10,

2001

“A Long Way Gone is a wrenching, beautiful, and mesmerizing tale. Beah’s amazing saga provides a haunting lesson about how gentle folks can be capable of great brutalities as well as goodness and courage. It will leave you breathless.”

—WALTER ISAACSON, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe

ISHMAEL BEAH A LONG WAY GONE

Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. He moved to the United States in 1998 and finished his last two years of high school at the United Nations International School in New York. He graduated from Oberlin College in 2004. He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee and has spoken before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, and many other NGO panels on children affected by war. He is also the head of the Ishmael Beah Foundation, which is dedicated to helping former child soldiers reintegrate into society and improve their lives. His work has appeared in VespertinePress and LIT magazine. He lives in Brooklyn.

A LONG WAY GONE Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

ISHMALEL BEAH

SARAH CRICHTON BOOKS Farrar, Straus and Giroux New York

To the memories of Nya Nje, Nya Keke, Nya Ndig-ge sia, and Kaynya.

Your spirits and presence within me give me strength to carry on,

to all the children of Sierra Leone who were robbed of their childhoods,

and

to the memory of Walter (Wally) Scheuer for his generous and compassionate heart and for teaching me the etiquette of

being a gentleman

A LONG WAY GONE

New York City, 1998

MY HIGH SCHOOL FRIENDS have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.

“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?” “Because there is a war.” “Did you witness some of the fighting?” “Everyone in the country did.” “You mean you saw people running around with guns and shooting each

other?” “Yes, all the time.” “Cool.” I smile a little. “You should tell us about it sometime.” “Yes, sometime.”

Contents

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11

Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14

Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17

Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20

Chapter 21 Chronology

Acknowledgments

1

THERE WERE ALL KINDS of stories told about the war that made it sound as if it was happening in a faraway and different land. It wasn’t until refugees started passing through our town that we began to see that it was actually taking place in our country. Families who had walked hundreds of miles told how relatives had been killed and their houses burned. Some people felt sorry for them and offered them places to stay, but most of the refugees refused, because they said the war would eventually reach our town. The children of these families wouldn’t look at us, and they jumped at the sound of chopping wood or as stones landed on the tin roofs flung by children hunting birds with slingshots. The adults among these children from the war zones would be lost in their thoughts during conversations with the elders of my town. Apart from their fatigue and malnourishment, it was evident they had seen something that plagued their minds, something that we would refuse to accept if they told us all of it. At times I thought that some of the stories the passersby told were exaggerated. The only wars I knew of were those that I had read about in books or seen in movies such as Rambo: First Blood, and the one in neighboring Liberia that I had heard about on the BBC news. My imagination at ten years old didn’t have the capacity to grasp what had taken away the happiness of the refugees. The first time that I was touched by war I was twelve. It was in January of 1993. I left home with Junior, my older brother, and our friend Talloi, both a year older than I, to go to the town of Mattru Jong, to participate in our friends’ talent show. Mohamed, my best friend, couldn’t come because he and his father were renovating their thatched-roof kitchen that day. The four of us had started a rap and dance group when I was eight. We were first introduced to rap music during one of our visits to Mobimbi, a quarter where the foreigners who worked for the same American company as my father lived. We often went to Mobimbi to swim in a pool and watch the huge color television and the white people who crowded the visitors’

recreational area. One evening a music video that consisted of a bunch of young black fellows talking really fast came on the television. The four of us sat there mesmerized by the song, trying to understand what the black fellows were saying. At the end of the video, some letters came up at the bottom of the screen. They read “Sugarhill Gang, ‘Rapper’s Delight.’” Junior quickly wrote it down on a piece of paper. After that, we came to the quarters every other weekend to study that kind of music on television. We didn’t know what it was called then, but I was impressed with the fact that the black fellows knew how to speak English really fast, and to the beat.

Later on, when Junior went to secondary school, he befriended some boys who taught him more about foreign music and dance. During holidays, he brought me cassettes and taught my friends and me how to dance to what we came to know as hip-hop. I loved the dance, and particularly enjoyed learning the lyrics, because they were poetic and it improved my vocabulary. One afternoon, Father came home while Junior, Mohamed, Talloi, and I were learning the verse of “I Know You Got Soul” by Eric B. & Rakim. He stood by the door of our clay brick and tin roof house laughing and then asked, “Can you even understand what you are saying?” He left before Junior could answer. He sat in a hammock under the shade of the mango, guava, and orange trees and tuned his radio to the BBC news.

“Now, this is good English, the kind that you should be listening to,” he shouted from the yard.

While Father listened to the news, Junior taught us how to move our feet to the beat. We alternately moved our right and then our left feet to the front and back, and simultaneously did the same with our arms, shaking our upper bodies and heads. “This move is called the running man,” Junior said. Afterward, we would practice miming the rap songs we had memorized. Before we parted to carry out our various evening chores of fetching water and cleaning lamps, we would say “Peace, son” or “I’m out,” phrases we had picked up from the rap lyrics. Outside, the evening music of birds and crickets would commence. On the morning that we left for Mattru Jong, we loaded our backpacks with notebooks of lyrics we were working on and stuffed our pockets with cassettes of rap albums. In those days we wore baggy jeans, and underneath them we had soccer shorts and sweatpants for dancing. Under our long- sleeved shirts we had sleeveless undershirts, T-shirts, and soccer jerseys.

We wore three pairs of socks that we pulled down and folded to make our crapes

* look puffy. When it got too hot in the day, we took some of the

clothes off and carried them on our shoulders. They were fashionable, and we had no idea that this unusual way of dressing was going to benefit us. Since we intended to return the next day, we didn’t say goodbye or tell anyone where we were going. We didn’t know that we were leaving home, never to return.

To save money, we decided to walk the sixteen miles to Mattru Jong. It was a beautiful summer day, the sun wasn’t too hot, and the walk didn’t feel long either, as we chatted about all kinds of things, mocked and chased each other. We carried slingshots that we used to stone birds and chase the monkeys that tried to cross the main dirt road. We stopped at several rivers to swim. At one river that had a bridge across it, we heard a passenger vehicle in the distance and decided to get out of the water and see if we could catch a free ride. I got out before Junior and Talloi, and ran across the bridge with their clothes. They thought they could catch up with me before the vehicle reached the bridge, but upon realizing that it was impossible, they started running back to the river, and just when they were in the middle of the bridge, the vehicle caught up to them. The girls in the truck laughed and the driver tapped his horn. It was funny, and for the rest of the trip they tried to get me back for what I had done, but they failed.

We arrived at Kabati, my grandmother’s village, around two in the afternoon. Mamie Kpana was the name that my grandmother was known by. She was tall and her perfectly long face complemented her beautiful cheekbones and big brown eyes. She always stood with her hands either on her hips or on her head. By looking at her, I could see where my mother had gotten her beautiful dark skin, extremely white teeth, and the translucent creases on her neck. My grandfather or kamor—teacher, as everyone called him—was a well-known local Arabic scholar and healer in the village and beyond.

At Kabati, we ate, rested a bit, and started the last six miles. Grandmother wanted us to spend the night, but we told her that we would be back the following day.

“How is that father of yours treating you these days?” she asked in a sweet voice that was laden with worry.

“Why are you going to Mattru Jong, if not for school? And why do you look so skinny?” she continued asking, but we evaded her questions. She

followed us to the edge of the village and watched as we descended the hill, switching her walking stick to her left hand so that she could wave us off with her right hand, a sign of good luck. We arrived in Mattru Jong a couple of hours later and met up with old friends, Gibrilla, Kaloko, and Khalilou. That night we went out to Bo Road, where street vendors sold food late into the night. We bought boiled groundnut and ate it as we conversed about what we were going to do the next day, made plans to see the space for the talent show and practice. We stayed in the verandah room of Khalilou’s house. The room was small and had a tiny bed, so the four of us (Gibrilla and Kaloko went back to their houses) slept in the same bed, lying across with our feet hanging. I was able to fold my feet in a little more since I was shorter and smaller than all the other boys.

The next day Junior, Talloi, and I stayed at Khalilou’s house and waited for our friends to return from school at around 2:00 p.m. But they came home early. I was cleaning my crapes and counting for Junior and Talloi, who were having a push-up competition. Gibrilla and Kaloko walked onto the verandah and joined the competition. Talloi, breathing hard and speaking slowly, asked why they were back. Gibrilla explained that the teachers had told them that the rebels had attacked Mogbwemo, our home. School had been canceled until further notice. We stopped what we were doing.

According to the teachers, the rebels had attacked the mining areas in the afternoon. The sudden outburst of gunfire had caused people to run for their lives in different directions. Fathers had come running from their workplaces, only to stand in front of their empty houses with no indication of where their families had gone. Mothers wept as they ran toward schools, rivers, and water taps to look for their children. Children ran home to look for parents wh

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