All My Sons Question

In the play All My Sons, many characters act quickly to what will benefit them. There are many examples, but I will focus on the example of Joe Keller lying about the scandal where his company sold broken parts to the army which ended in a result of 21 dead pilots. He blamed his partner for it, when it was really his decision to go through and give the parts to the army. He kept it a secret all this time, until his partner's daughter Annie came to town. Joe believed that the needs of his family were much more important than the needs of society. So he lied to society to protect his family and his buisness. So when Chris finally finds out his father's big lie, he is very upset. Keller says to him, "Chris, I did it for you, it was a chance and I took it for you. I'm sixty-one years old, when would I have another chance to make something for you? Sixty-one years old you don't get another chance, do ya?" (Miller 70). Keller thought that by protecting his family from scrutiny by lying, he would make it in society. His family was what really mattered to him by keeping the buisness and a good name for them.
I believe that in some ways Joe is right, but in some ways wrong. Yes, you want everything the best for your family, but you shouldn't lie to them. At the end of the day they are your family and you should love them regardless, but there are also some people out there that have a very hard time forgiving. In this incident of Joe's, I probably would have done the same thing, however I would have told my family what I did, and they can decide how they would like to handle that.

Reading Lolita in Tehran 2

Reading farther into Reading Lolita in Tehran, I started to get a little bored. Nothing has happened! All that she has been talking about are the works of books that they study and how it pertains to her life. She is a very jumpy writer, and tends to go off on random subjects a lot. I do like the fact though, that even though her no nonsense talk is annoying, it helps develop characters and her voice as a writer. I have realized that to me this book is not as interesting because there is no main conflict. The only thing that would be considered as a conflict I presume is the role that the women have now in their country due to the invasion of other people. I hope more interesting stuff comes along.

One of my favorite parts of the book so far is when the class is still just getting started and it is still in the awkward stage. Azar Nafisi asks them to do an exercise asking questions like what are 6 traits that you like most in people, what do you think of yourself, what is most important to you...etc. One of her students responds to the question saying, "I am not ready for that question yet," and then Azar says, "They are not ready-yet" (Nafisi 57). This quote interests me because it has a little bit of foreshadowing, saying that they aren't ready for what (I) have in store for them. Also, something that this book reminds me of is the things that we learn about in AP World. We learned that women's roles are very minor in the earliest of times, and once it seemed like we as a world got over that and started to see women somewhat as equal, people invade Tehran and make the women wear headdresses, and make them oblige to all of these unfair customs. I am very grateful for where I live today.

Reading Lolita in Tehran 1

I am reading a book called Reading Lolita in Tehran. The book is about a teacher in Iran who taught at the university, but then the university became too strict. It worried too much about the appearance and presence of the Iranian women than the education they were getting. The teacher could not take it anymore and resigned. She proposed the idea of having a secret class at her house with 8 of her students to discuss literature.
This book reminds me a lot of All the Pretty Horses. Unfortuanately, like All the Pretty Horses, the author does not use qutation marks either. She is worse however, because she does not start new paragraphs when someone new is speaking, it is all in one paragraph. I found a couple of quotes I enjoyed throughout the book. One was about losing someone, "Yet my tale would be incomplete without those who could not or did not remain with us; their absences persist, like an acute pain that seems to have no physical source" (Nafisi 5). I really like this quote because it resembles the thought that losing someone is hard, they will always be there playing a small role in your everyday lives, because of the pain that they have caused. This quote ties in with All the Pretty Horses, when John Grady Cole and Rawlins hear Blevins get shot. Even though they did not like Blevins and he caused them a lot of trouble, they were still very sad about his death. Especially Rawlins, the one that hated him the most, had the most sympathy for Blevins. Another quote I found that I liked was, "How well could one teach when the main concern of university officials was not the quality of one's work but the color of one's lips, the subversive potential of a single strand of hair?" (Nafisi 11). This book reminds me of how Alejandra's grandma (blanking on her name) always strived for the best for Alejandra. She did not care exactly how Alejandra came about things, as long as they were proper and did not disrupt her reputation. That was the only thing she was fixed upon, and didn't really care too much about how Alejandra felt toward different things, especially John Grady Cole.
This book seems very interesting and I am curious to read on and see how Nassrin supposedly does not make it through the journey with the rest of the secret group!