Weekly Response Twelve

There is no doubt that, throughout this course, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time has been my favorite read. I’m on the track to becoming a teacher, and although it’s not for special education, I feel that any educator should be well versed on how to cooperate with different children – different thinking, speaking, learning styles, etc. – and learn to embrace their differences. Therefore, I have decided to use this for the final paper of the semester. As for the theoretical texts, I haven’t quite decided. Woloch’s The One vs. The Many can be seen as relevant in the character development of Christopher, as well as the literary text regarding estranging the familiar, as seeing things through Christopher’s eyes can very well be considered taking a different view on things many people merely glance over. Furthermore, Lisa Zunshine’s Theory of Mind and Experimental Representations of Fictional Consciousness relates directly to the learning form Christopher takes on through the book.

I think I’ll stick to discussing only one literary theory in relation to the text, as I’m not sure if I would be able to adequately bring in multiple theories and do them each justice through one six to eight page paper. Once I decide which theory I would best be able to dig through, I’m confident I can knock this paper out pretty well.

Weekly Response Eleven

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence…changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original.”

            – Literary Theory page 1235

Question: Does having Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis as a graphic novel accomplish a sort of reproduction?

Walter Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, talks about the way reproductions alter a work of art by making it visible to those not experiencing its uniqueness in its original position in space and time. The story of the Iranian Revolution and Marji’s life as a whole are both told through The Complete Persepolis in the form of a graphic novel. It can be argued that this form of storytelling changes these two events into works of art. However, readers aren’t experiencing them firsthand; they’re experiencing the reproductions Satrapi has put out for the public to see.

This method may just be the best way for her to explain these occurrences, though. It brings events that happened years earlier to the comic book form and therefore maybe more relative to those in today’s time. The pictures are Satrapi’s way of reproducing the events she recalls from her childhood. Readers aren’t getting the unique experience Satrapi had, but are in fact given the opportunity to make it their own. The ownership is being changed by this reproduction and therefore becoming relatable to readers by not only words, but pictures.

Weekly Response Ten

“According to McCloud, there are two important effects of cartooning: the first enables a focus on specific details; the second is ‘the universality of cartoon imagery. The more cartoony a face is, for instance, the more people it could be said to describe’ (31). Cartooning, her argues, is a way of seeing, not just a way of drawing, so the simplification of characters and images toward a purpose can be an effective tool: ‘[W]hen you look at a photo or realistic drawing of a face – you see it as the face of another but when you enter the world of the cartoon – you see yourself’ (36).”

            – Estranging the Familiar: "East" and "West" in Satrapi’s Persepolis1 Page 228

Marjane Satrapi strongly utilizes the graphic novel style. Although the cartoon faces are simple, it is still possible to see the way each event affects Marji as she goes through them – the worry and trying times. Furthermore though, and I had never thought of this until reading Naghibi, the simplistic illustrations do allow readers to place themselves in the position of characters and consider how they would be acting. Although Western readers may have never had to deal with the processes that Marji goes through, the practice of becoming the character develops more in a graphic novel than it may in a normal novel. Readers who never had to really deal with cultural differences, like the Western vs Iranian in Persepolis, are able to relate to the cultural differences with other differences – not fitting in, not feeling like you belong, etc.