The End

This is the last blog here. It has been a great experience blogging, because afterall, it is my first time! The end of Persepolis seemed like it left me hanging. It left me thinking about it. Someone once said that a true great movie is one that makes you think about it afterwards. I think the same goes with a novel, a really great one just leaves you thinking about it. Marjane ended the novel saying it would have been better to just go, with a graphic of her mom lying in her dad's arms. I couldn't really understand what she was saying. It felt like she left me hanging there. Though I couldn't understand what she was trying to say, I definitely felt what she wanted the readers to feel. A feeling of losing something forever, a feeling of never being able to turn back, a very upsetting feeling. Because Marjane ended the novel this way, and left me feeling so upset, I couldn't help but to think about it afterwards. I wanted to know what happened next, I didn't want the book to end there. I wanted to know what really happened to her mom, and what happened to the war. I desperately wanted to know that afterwards, everything turned out fine, because if it didn't it would be too hard to accept, it would be too dreadful. Of course, that would lead me to wanting to read Persepolis 2. But then would reading Persepolis 2 be better? Or is it better to just end there? Maybe leaving me hanging there is what Marjane is trying to do with her ending. Maybe knowing what truly happened afterwards wouldn't be true to the story. Maybe it's like a war story, in order to portray the true meaning of the story, sometimes the truth isn't even important.

Absolute Evil

After Sky's presentation and the song "Dear Mr. President", I started to think about something. We are always complaining about our presidents. Doesn't even matter who it is, every president has been hated by parts of the population. We seem to put the blame of anything and everything on our presidents. We describe them as awful people, we see them as a criminal, putting everyone one's life in danger, we hate them. We have so much to say, get so emotional, so upset and mad at our presidents when we hear of decisions they make in the news. When the news broadcasts criminals actually murdering people, all we do is say to our kids "don't walk alone at night". What is the psychology behind this? Why do we blame our presidents for everything bad that happens in the country? We say of them as if they were pure evil, they don't care about anyone else put themselves, and they simply don't care about people dying. But is anyone pure evil? Can anyone really say that he or she has no feelings when he or she sees someone die? Does anyone care about nothing but him or herself? Does anyone like to see homeless people? Does anyone like to see soldiers die? Is anyone just pure evil? Or is it just us wanting to blame someone, anyone, for the things that are just too awful to accept? Do we blame someone in order for awful things to be bearable? I can never imagine someone to be pure evil. We are all human, how can anyone be just completely evil? People can choose to deny themselves and pretend to be completely emotionless, to be completely ignorant, to be completely evil. People can be too prideful to admit that they have feelings too. But can anyone truely be emotionless or ignorant? Can anyone be pure evil?

President

What I remembered from Donald's presentation on the article "After Iran gets the Bomb" is that the USA has three choices 1st is to bomb them, which would take forever to do and impossible to do because we cannot bomb every single place, the 2nd is to talk to them, which would be really hard to do also because they don't really want to talk, and the last is to accept it and try to contain it, which would probably be the best solution. Listening to Donald's presentation, I could not help but to ponder on what I would do if I were the president. I cannot figure out how presidents live. Let's just take this Iran thing for example, if I were the president, would I bomb Iran? or would I try to talk to them? or would I just accept it and try to contain it? What should I do? Because I just know that whatever decision I make, someone will always think I made the wrong decision, I was really stupid, or I didn't know what I was thinking. No matter what I do, I can never make the United States happy, there will always be someone who hates me, who thinks I'm stupid. Then how do presidents live? How do you live knowing someone hates your guts? How do you sleep at night, knowing each decision you make can impact a million other people? I can't even decide on which restaurant to take my mom to when she visits me. So how do presidents live? How do they live with so much pressure on their shoulders? How do they live thinking about pleasing other all the time? How do they live knowing that the decision they make today will be learned by kids in school 50 years later? With so much pressure, so much hate, so much support, and so much love, how do presidents live?