Is Marjane’s Grandmother Justified to be Upset by Marjane's Selfish Actions?

Callista Wilson

ELA

24 October 2017

Is Marjane’s Grandmother Justified to be Upset by Marjane’s Selfish Actions? 

In the graphic novel Persepolis, Marjane diverts the attention of the Guardians of the revolution by blaming an innocent man for speaking inappropriately to her. She watches his arrest and later laughs about it to her grandmother. Marjane’s grandmother is justified to yell as she once taught Marjane to keep her dignity and feels that Marjane is directly insulting the efforts and ideas of her many heroic family members. When addressing the innocent man during his arrest, Marjane states, "You dare look at me in the eyes and lie!" (286). Marjane disobeys her grandmother by losing her dignity and aggressively blaming an innocent man for lying when she instead was the liar. Also, Marjane's grandmother states, “Have you forgotten who your grandfather was? He spent a third of his life in prison for having defended some innocents! And your uncle Anoosh? Have you forgotten him too? He gave his life for his ideas! What have I taught you? Hunh?? “Integrity”!!! Does this word mean anything to you?” (291). Marjane's grandmother has reason to yell as Marjane insults her ancestors who have had made selfless sacrifices to protect innocent people in the past by laughing at the fact that an innocent was wrongfully treated.

OHP Reflection

Callista Wilson

24 October 2017

IHSS and ELA

OHP Reflection

The most enjoyable part of the interview process was truly connecting with the interviewees, Larry and Mary Jennings, and treating our interview as if it were a casual, rather than staged, conversation. Although our group had prepared a series of questions, we focused on listening and understanding what the Jennings wanted to say. Also we made sure not to interrupt the Jennings even if the topics they chose to talk about did not directly refer to a question but was still relevant to the interview.  Because the questions asked were open ended the Jennings were not pressured to give a certain answer and were naturally lead to tell stories and express their emotions. At the end of the interview, we invited the Jennings to speak about anything additional which we had not covered. This way, we were assured to receive key information about their experience even if we left out an important question. In addition, asking follow-up questions and listening to their stories made our interview successful as it genuinely demonstrated the Jenning’s personal experience of the devastation and the lessons they particularly learned from Hurricane Harvey.    

For future students assigned with an “Oral History Project,” my advice would be to spend time researching or getting to know the interviewees prior to writing questions. This way, future students can write questions based off of what they know they can receive from the interviewee. Also, they will be able to set up open ended questions which their interviewees can fully answer and elaborate on. In addition, I would advise future students to download a program which allows them to easily pause, fast forward and slow down the speaking in the audio recording when typing the transcript. This will allow them to complete an accurate transcript while being time efficient.