"The charismatic passion in the book is not simply for literature itself but for the kind of inspirational teaching of it which helps students to teach themselves by applying their own intelligence and emotions to what they are reading."
-Paul Allen from "The Guardian" |
"An intimate memoir of life under a repressive regime and a celebration of the vitality of literature... as rich and profound as the novel Nafisi teaches."
-The Miami Herald |
AZAR NAFISI'S PURPOSE
Reading Lolita in Tehran, is a memoir of Nafisi's life in Iran from the late 70's to the late 90's, but it is also many other things. After teaching literature at three universities in Tehran, Azar Nafisi picked seven of her best students and invited them to come to her home every week to discuss literature. She and her students began to think of these classes as a method to escape from the reality of Iran's oppressive theocracy. However, her book illustrates an escape to a true republic where they are all able to discover another reality which is themselves. The question that Nafisi's readers may all ask themselves is, "Why Lolita?" Lolita is a controversial novel that tells the story of an aging Humbert and his obsessive, devouring passion for a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze. Lolita is his own nickname for her. In Nafisi's class, Humbert's description of Lolita's life and identity becomes a metaphor for the way the radical Islamic state was treating its women. In Lolita, Humbert is saying that Lolita initiated their relationship and supposedly seduced him. This in a way relates to radical Islam blaming women (Allen).
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It is a thoughtful account of the novels they studied together and the unexpected parallels they drew between those books and their own experiences as women living under the unforgiving rule of the mullahs. And it is, finally, an eloquent brief on the transformative powers of fiction -- on the refuge from ideology that art can offer to those living under tyranny, and art's affirmative and subversive faith in the voice of the individual. |
One theme that I found to be very prevalent and important to the book is memories. In each section, the themes from the students' readings are linked to Nafisi's memories of her time during the revolution. Nafisi explains in her author's note, "The facts in this story are true insofar as any memory is every truthful" (Nafisi ix). This lets her readers know that she is writing from memory rather than writing from the exact truth which is significant to the story. Reading Lolita in Tehran is very intimate because Azar Nafisi talks about her family, the universities she's taught, and her students. This memoir is a way for Nafisi to share her story about how she was oppressed while living in Tehran.
Nafisi uses imagery and metaphors to show memories from Tehran are still prevalent in her mind and can come up at times in her later life in America. For instance Nafisi states, "This class was the color of my dreams" (Nafisi 11). This shows that her private class was a way to fulfill her desires as the political and social climate of Iran became more and more hostile to her way of life.
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Borrowed from YouTube