Reading Blog: The Veil

Text to personal experience

After reading the first chapter of Persepolis, "The Veil", I can connect certain events from the book to my life.  There is one specific event in the chapter that reminded me of an event that occurred recently in my life. 

In this chapter, one of the major events is when Marjane goes to school and her teacher asks her what she wants to be when she grows up.  Marjane responded with a very surprising yet unrealistic answer.  She said she wanted to be a prophet of God.  This event reminded me of a similar situation that happened to my brother, Lorenzo, recently.  In school, my brother's teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.  Like Marjane, he replied to the teacher with a very weird response.  My brother said he wanted to be a lizard. 

Marjane's classmates laughed at her odd response.  Lorenzo was also laughed at by his classmates for responding so unrealisticly.  The teacher, on the other hand, didn't laugh, but got worried about Marjane's unreasonable answer.  The teacher called Marjane's parents in for a meeting regarding the girl's rare desire to be a prophet.  My brother's teacher took the same measures as Marjane's teacher, because she scheduled a meeting with my parents to discuss Lorenzo's unusual desire to be a lizard.  Lorenzo's teacher didn't think it was normal for a kid to want to be an animal.  

After reading about the event that occurred in this chapter and what happened to my brother, you can see that both situations are almost exactly the same.  They both experience discrimination for having different desires than their classmates.  They both get laughed at and get their parents called in for a meeting, just because they said they wanted to be something uncommon.