Reading Lolita in
Tehran
(Essay 1: nonfiction; central argument)
Reading Lolita in Tehran chronicles the life
of Azar Nafisi, the author of the memoir. It is the story of the Iranian
Revolution from the point of a literature instructor who although born in Iran
was schooled in America, deciding to teach at Tehran University in 1979, the
revolutionary year. She walks the reader through a pivotal time in Iranian
history, emphasizing the struggle between social obligations, and personal
freedom. Through her teachings at the University, and at her Thursday morning
group gatherings, she and her students learn to subtly fight for their freedom
by reading and teaching about the various forbidden works of Nabokov,
Fitzgerald, and James, and by drawing realities from fiction employing the use
of parallelism.
At
the very beginning of the novel and at the first all-girls, secret literature
group gathering, seven of Azar’s committed students gather around in her home.
The first book they discuss is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, a story of a young
girl who essentially becomes trapped in a much older man’s imagination, as well
as his reality. While reading this highly controversial book, the girl’s as
well as Azar eventually are forced to discuss the true character of Lolita. Was
she a loose, bratty girl who had what she had coming, or was she an innocent?
Azar comes to the conclusion that Lolita is only described by the view point of
Humbert , therefore we have no idea what kind of girl and woman she would have
become if it wasn’t for Humbert robbing her of her childhood. “At some point,
the truth of Iran’s past became as immaterial to those who appropriated it as
the truth of Lolita’s is to Humbert. It became immaterial in the same way
that Lolita’s truth, her desires and life, must lose color before Humbert’s one
obsession, his desire to turn a twelve-year-old unruly girl into his mistress.”
In this quote Azar uses the relationship between victim and jailer in the story
of Lolita as a metaphor (part of figurative language) to life in the Islamic
Republic of Iran. Everyone in that
living room was able to relate to Lolita. Lolita was robbed of the
possibilities of life by Humbert, and Azar and her female students were robbed
of what could have been, and what should. However she goes on to say that through
reading the novel “we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings;
and no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to
escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom.” They found freedom in
reading forbidden works of fiction, and by also discussing and forming opinions
on it. In this first part of the book they found that the best way to find
their voices was to live between the two world of reality and fiction, and Azar
demonstrates that by drawing parallels between the novel and their own lives.
In
the second part of the book, Azar Nafisi takes us back to her teaching days at
Tehran University. After the Ayatollah Khomeini enforced sharia law making all
women wear the veil that hides their body head to toe in a large black robe,
Azar was not sure if she would go back to teaching, but after much deliberation
she decided that she would be doing a service for herself and others if she
went back, so she did. However these were hard times in Iran, many teachers had
been expelled, and students killed, and for those who formed an opposing
opinion received either floggings or public executions. During a lecture on The
Great Gatsby, written by Scott F. Fitzgerald, a young man called Mr. Nyazi,
makes his opinions on the book known saying that the only good thing about the
book “is that it exposes the immorality and decadence of American
Society”(Nafisi 127),. Therefore Azar decides to put the book on a mock trial
in class, in which Mr. Nyazi is the prosecutor and another student named Zarrin
is the defendant, and Azar Nafisi is Gatsby. Zarrin argues with Mr. Nyazi
accusing him of losing the ability to distinguish fiction from reality. Outside
of class Azar seems to take a stance in between two extremes. On one hand she
realizes and believes that Gatsby should not be taken so literally, but at the
same time she advises her class to “enter that world, hold your breath with the
characters, and become involved in their destiny… This is how you read a novel:
you inhale the experience” (Nafisi111). She wants people to put their own feet
in the pair of shoes provided by the novel, not necessarily so that one is
forced to agree with it, but so that one person has a fair chance at
understanding it. In conclusion she draws a parallel between Gatsby and reality
by later on stating, “What we in Iran had in common with Fitzgerald was this
dream that became our obsession and took over our reality, this terrible but beautiful
dream, impossible in its actualization, for which any amount of violence must
be justified or forgiven,”(Nafisi 144). She realizes that the real point of
fiction is for the reader to be far enough into it to be able to question the
society presented in the novel, as well as in their own, and that is a small
freedom in itself.
Part three of the book takes place later in
the revolution, when the state of Iran became an Islamic theocracy and went to
war with Iraq. In this part Azar Nafisi tries to show the ethos of the time in
Iran by showing how women became instruments to men, and how citizens were
terrorized by their government, as well as by the war. During this time , for
women the political becomes very personal, “it seems as if, apart from literature
, the political had devoured us, eliminating the personal or private,” (nafisi
237). This time in Iran seems to be a fitting time to read Henry James, since
this was a time in which people especially women needed courage, and as stated
by Nafisi on page 248 “there are different kinds of courage in James”. She was
right about that, for example in the novel Washington Square, and a few others
there are characters such as Catherine who are never credited with courage
because they are considered meek. However in “Daisy Miller”, Daisy is not the
retreating shy type, in fact as Nassrin a girl who is part of the secret
literature group recalls when Daisy at the very start tells Winterbourne not to
be afraid “she means not to be afraid of conventions and traditions- that is
one kind of courage,” ( Nafisi 248). Throughout many of James’s novels there
are many different reasons for which the characters gain courage, Daisy Miller
to fight traditions and conventions, Catherine Sloper who stands up to those in
her life, and Strether who gains the courage to empathize with others. During
part three Azar Nafisi brings these stories into her own life, by drawing
comparisons, and contributing all of these stories lessons to her own life and
gaining courage in all these different ways the characters gain courage. While
describing terrible humiliations suffered by some of her female students she
says, “There were no public articulations of these humiliations, so we took
refuge in accidental occasions to weave our resentment and hatreds into little
stories that lost their impact as soon as they were told,” (Nafisi 251). Azar
and her students took the stories of the characters in the Henry James novels,
and applied their experiences to their own. Through James they formed the courage
to laugh at awful memories and move on to the next day with their heads held
high.
Azar
and her students learn to subtly fight for their freedom by reading and
teaching about the various forbidden works of Nabokov, Fitzgerald, and James,
and by realities from fiction, employing the use of parallelism, as well as
ethos, and figurative language. This novel really was “a memoir in books”, as
stated on the cover. It is so well written that after reading this memoir one
cannot go about reading fiction the way they did before. Finally, it makes you realize the power
literature has to transform your world.
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