Thoreau: A Voice for All Things Wild

Guest Post by Ernest Marshall

An awareness of nature pervades the written word, whether poems, essays, short stories, novels, or newspaper and magazine articles.  Here is an example at hand.  I finished the gripping conclusion to Mary Higgins Clark’s A Cry In The Night , my latest mystery, at about 2 a.m. this morning.  The opening paragraph of the concluding chapter reads like this:

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

   The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is about a regular kid -- not a child prodigy, not particularly wise beyond his years. The only thing that separates him from the willfully blind adults who surround him is that he has not yet learned to hate. The film never depicts him as a hero, at least an intentional one, just a kid who acts like any other would act, innocently unknowing of the expectations and prejudices of those around him.

     The protagonist is a blue-eyed, brown-haired eight-year-old named Bruno (Asa Butterfield) living in a stage were fantasy and reality remain merged. He resides with his family in Germany, with his older sister, soldier dad, and mom. He tries to find fun as best he can, with no help from his sibling, who is the simpering lapchild type, engaged in a misguided coming-of-age, decorating her walls with appreciation for her country and throwing aside her dolls.

     After living comfortably in their home, his family announces they are to move away, closer to the new job. His father has earned a promotion. This is supposed to be good news, but isn't for Bruno - he wants his old house and friends and doesn't want his life changed. Worse, he has no say about the matter and is moved to a base where men in gray pass him stiffly,  talking to his father.

    There are no children he can see, until he stumbles quite by accident on a farm occupied by underwashed, underfed people. He is encouraged to stay away, as his father tells him the people are not humans and shouldn't be treated as such. But they seem human enough to him, especially Schmeul, a boy his age who catches his attention. They meet and laugh at each other's names, and promise to visit more.

     In a different situation, the friendship would be considered harmless, and Bruno would be able to freely play with the boy before his return. The fact that he is living in Auschwitz puts a damper on that ideal. As is, Schmeul is treated as a flea-ridden cat -- don't bother to get attached to him, he'll be gone soon enough. But love for his fatherland has not impressed itself in Bruno's mind yet, and he ignores the others warnings', pleased to have another child to interact with.

     This film is based on a young adult novel by John Boyne, described as a "fable" by the author. It contains telling details of the holocaust, but from a child's eye view -- nothing is treated as if Bruno's concentration was turned, and yellow stars and fences are interspersed with the normal thoughts of a kid - toys, friends, and irritating siblings. It is a small but powerful story, meant to send a message with only as much information as we need. The rest we know for ourselves.

     For basically first-time actors, the young boys who play Bruno and Schmeul do fairly well. However, I was annoyed by the skips and jumps in Butterfield's performance. In scenes of fantasy and play, he behaved naturally, but when the story becomes more intense, he seemed slightly confused about how to react to the script, which hampered the believability somewhat. He did a generally good job, however, and one shouldn't want him to progress too fast to avoid a Culkin-ish speed-up of maturity.

     The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is quiet and infused with moral ambiguity. Bruno doesn't view his father as a monster even as he begins to know more. Even his mother doesn't seem completely aware of the situation, and although she knows of the prisoners, it still comes as a shock when she figures out what the torrent of smoke streaming into the air is.

     Also, it contains the most shocking and unexpected ending since The Life Before Her Eyes. Although the adults turn away, reminding themselves of their good fortune that they are not within the barbed fence, they are forced, in the most horrendous way possible, to look back. Everybody finds their inner humanity, and no one wins (Rated PG-13.)

*

Born Under a Million Shadows by Andrea Busfield

My name is Fawad, and my mother tells me I was born under the shadow of the Taliban. Because she said no more, I imagined her stepping out of the sunshine and into the dark, crouching in a corner to protect the stomach that was hiding me, while a man with a stick watched over us, ready to beat me into the world.

In 21st century Afghanistan, war has shaped much of life for several generations. After the Afghans were finally liberated from Russian occupation in 1989, the power vacuum was filled by rival warlords, and the country was consumed by civil war. Then the rise of the Taliban finally brought peace, but at a terrible price.

Fawad, the perceptive, funny eleven-year-old narrator of  Born Under a Million Shadows, sees the Taliban fall in 2001. Fawad and his mother have lost most of their family and rely on the charity of relatives. His father and brother were killed, and his sister was abducted by Taliban forces and never seen again. Along with his friends and cousins, Fawad tries to earn or beg for money, on the streets of Kabul, to help them survive.

Then Fawad's mother, Mariya, finds a housekeeping position with a group of foreigners. They go to live with her employers, including Georgie, a British aid worker, and May, an engineer from America, who are helping with the gradual process of rebuilding Afghanistan. Their household also includes James, a British journalist. The lifestyles and values of their housemates are very different from the strict Muslim way Fawad and his mother have always lived. James is in inveterate drinker and fancies himself a bit of a ladies' man. May is a lesbian, and Georgie is involved with the powerful Afghan warlord Haji Khan, a dangerous man who may be involved in the opiate trade. Despite their differences, bonds of affection quickly grow, and Fawad, Mariya, and their English-speaking housemates form a colorful, unusual sort of family.

British journalist Andrea Busfield has lived and worked in Afghanistan, and her passion for this beautiful, war-torn country illuminates Born Under a Million Shadows. She vividly paints the streets of Kabul and the mountainous countryside, and reading this novel, I absorbed some of her love and understanding of the Afghan culture.

While this book deals with grim subjects, it is not a sad book. It doesn't shy away from the suffering woven throughout the story, but it doesn't sink into despair, either. Death and violence are part of daily life in Kabul, so people just carry on, striving to survive, looking out for friends and relatives, offering hospitality to guests, celebrating holidays, and falling in love. What really stands out in this book -- aside from the strong sense of time and place -- is the vibrant cast of characters, the connections among them, and the humor that flows throughout the story.

I think this book will appeal to a wide range of fiction lovers, particularly those who enjoy delving into other places and cultures.

FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher with no expectation other than that I read it and offer an honest review.

Read Another Review: Misfit Salon

Rating: 4

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

This is only the second graphic novel I've picked up, and I fell in love with it. I read it all in one sitting; I laughed, I cried, and at moments, I was speechless with rage. The events in this book were not new to me, but I felt I was looking at them from a fresh perspective, in a way that was more immediate and personal.

The stark black and white drawings seemed deceptively simple at first glance, but they are actually richly detailed and expressive, and the images wedged themselves in my mind more sharply than words could. Is it possible that at my advanced age, I'm about to become a convert to graphic novels? Hmm...


Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir guides us through the events surrounding the Islamic Revolution in Iran, starting in 1979. She was about 10 years old when the Shah was overthrown, an event that, after years of harsh oppression, her family celebrated with other Iranians. Marjane Satrapi is of my generation, but I witnessed these events from a great distance, as if I saw them through the wrong end of a telescope. I remember our sadness and anger over the capture of American hostages in the U.S. Embassy -- fellow citizens wrenched from their families by shadowy evil-doers. I knew nothing about the fate of Iranians at that time, and I wouldn't understand until years later why they blamed the U.S. for the actions of their deposed Shah -- that simply wasn't part of our history curriculum. I hope children today are being educated through a wider lens.

Ten-year-old Marjane's parents are intellectual Marxists -- Marxists who drive a Cadillac and have a maid who takes her meals alone in the kitchen. Marjane is beginning to question these inconsistencies, but this is overshadowed by the turmoil all around her. Friends and relatives are escaping the clutches of the Shah's regime, only to be ensnared by the Islamic Revolution, and the war with Iraq begins.
This book has amazing depth. We are guided through this part of Iran's history and tutored in the politics and philosophy surrounding these events in a way that's simple but thought provoking. We're absorbing these things through the mind of a young girl who's struggling to understand what's happening in her world.

Dark images of violence and death blend seamlessly with the story of Marjane's coming of age, which includes scenes from the schoolyard and her relationship with God; it also offers glimpses of her adolescent rebellion and her love of Western music and clothes. With few words needing to be said, we intensely feel the love among her family members and friends. We experience the constant fear and paranoia, as the vise of the new regime closes around them. Yet there are moments that are surprisingly funny. All this combines to create a story that is heart-wrenching, humorous, and rich in food for thought.

As soon as I finished this, I immediately reserved Persepolis II and the movie adaptation of Persepolis at the library. I am hoping I can involve my family in reading the books or watching the film with me. I am salivating over the potential for discussion -- about contemporary history, our country's role in Mideast history, and life in a theocracy. Religious freedom is something we blessedly take for granted, though there are ripples in the U.S. urging us to replace secular law with "God's law." This book also offers potential for discussion about how childhood can be shaped by fear and violence and also by courage and love.

Read More Reviews: Eclectic/Eccentric; Caribousmom; Small World Reads; Good Books and Wine


Rating: 4.5

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi

This autobiographical graphic novel picks up where Persepolis left off, bringing Marjane into young womanhood. As the novel opens, she is living in Austria. Wanting their beloved only child to leave Iran, where the vise of the Fundamentalist Muslim government continues to tighten, her parents arranged for her to live with an Austrian friend. The new family does not embrace her, however, and Marjane goes to live in a boarding house run by nuns, contemplating the irony of having escaped one staunchly religious environment only to end up in another.

Living and going to school in a Western society is a radically different experience for her. There is the language barrier -- Marjane doesn't speak German. And she is surrounded by teens who dabble in nihilistic philosophy, babbling about the meaninglessness of life without ever having experienced war or death firsthand. Marjane desperately wants to fit in with her Austrian peers and find her niche. But when she does, she feels she's betraying her Iranian identity, turning her back on on her war-torn homeland and the beloved relatives who died standing up for freedom. She struggles through isolation, academic failure, drug abuse, and first love. Then she eventually returns to Iran. There she is surrounded by loving relatives and friends, but she finds that her return to her own culture, after the freedom she enjoyed in Western Europe, is wrenching. And her conflicts about her identity don't fade away.

I loved this book just as much as Persepolis. Again a short book with simple, almost stark illustrations camouflages an incredibly rich story which weaves together Iranian history and politics, a bit of dry humor, and a painfully honest story of growing up and early adulthood. This author isn't afraid to reveal moments when she was cowardly or cruel, including one passage that actually kept me awake part of the night. The result is a fully developed, flesh and blood character I'll never forget.

As I was reading Persepolis II, I kept remembering Ana's post on literature being either a homecoming or a journey to a foreign land. If you haven't read that post and the discussion thread under it, I highly recommend it. :-) Ana quoted Alberto Manguel:

What is this homecoming? It can be argued that we perceive the world in one of two ways—as a foreign land or as home—and that our libraries reflect both these opposing views. As we wander among our books, picking at random a volume from the shelves and leafing through it, the pages either astound us by their difference from our own experience or comfort us with their similitude. The greed of Agamemnon or the meekness of Kim’s lama are to me utterly foreign; Alice’s bewilderment or Sinbad’s curiosity reflect again and again my own emotions. Every reader is either a pausing wanderer or a traveller returned.

Persepolis II is literally a tale of a journey to a foreign land and a homecoming. And for me it offered some of the best of both experiences -- reading Marjane's story, I felt like both a wanderer and a traveler returned. Many of her experiences were unfamiliar to me. I know little about Iranian culture. I have never lived through war or political oppression. I have spent my entire life in blissful ignorance of what it's like to be deprived of religious freedom or to lose over a million countrymen to war. And I've never been viewed as a "third world" person by Westerners.

At the same time many of the experiences she described were poignantly familiar: feeling adrift in adolescence and early adulthood, struggling to make a disastrous relationship work, and being horrified at what one has become and scrambling to begin anew. In this story, I saw reflections of myself at 14, 17, and 19 and I loved the author's honesty and humor in delving into her own youth.
There is something about this combined experience -- already knowing what it's like to travel a certain path, yet following it through a completely new landscape -- that is so enriching. Instead of feeling I'm reading about another life and another culture, I feel I'm there, and I absorb a bit of it into myself. I think that is one of the best things multicultural literature accomplishes.

Read More Reviews: Zen Leaf; Caribousmom; Book Nut


Rating: 4.5

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me