Jonathan DiCamillo

Block E
Rough Draft:
Reflection
Childhood can be defined as the period from birth to adolescent. In the course of
childhood, children experience certain events that impacts their lives in a way that nothing in
adulthood could. The novels Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie and
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi tell stories about children growing up in revolutionary periods
including the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Iran revolution during the Iran-Iraq war.
Growing up during these time periods shape them as individuals and explains on how they
became the people they turned out to be. Certain events that happen in childhood affects ideas,
expressions, likes and dislikes, and even their political views upon becoming adults.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is about two boys, the narrator and his best
friend Luo. They grow up while China is going through the Cultural Revolution under chairman
Mao. At this time, all schools have been shut down, all western literature is banned, and the
youth are being reeducated through labor to turned into working men instead of bright
intellectuals. The two boys parents are considered class enemies of the state, leaving the children
to be reeducation in the town with the most poverty located on the Phoenix Mountain. The
mountain is far into the jungle being miles away from the city of where they used to live and
takes almost the whole day just to hike up to the village that sits on it. The boys experience hard
labor, love, responsibility, and hope. The narrator is a very smart kid who played the violin,
while his friend Luo who was also smart, was a great story teller. One job they had to do during
reeducation was carry piles of waste along the mountain and another job they had to do was mine
coal. This was a dangerous job because there was not any safety equipment and could easily
collapse. Luo and the narrator had to perform these jobs with the idea that they only had three in
thousandth chance of ever leaving the mountain, but still they had some faith that would leave.
While they were staying on the mountain they discover love when the find the Little Seamstress
while looking for a tailor in another village. They fall in love with her until their hearts get
broken when she decides to leave the mountain to become a city girl. Luo became her boyfriend
while the narrator had a platonic love for her. The Little Seamstress lived farther away in another
village and the boys risked their chance of getting in trouble as well as their lives, to go visit her.
However, they wanted to civilize her and educate her because she was lacking basic knowledge
that anyone who grew in the city would have. They boys came across one of their friends
working on the mountain in a town named Four Eyes. Four Eyes had banned books that his
mother sent him hidden away in a case. One of the books authors was Balzac and the boys
wanted to get those books to read to the Seamstress and do everything they can to please and
convince Four eyes into giving them the books. But, in the end the Seamstress becomes obsessed
with city life after being read about it from the books and left the village leaving the boys
nothing left to but burn the books and making it seem as if everything they did for her was for
nothing. Their experiences taught them life lessons on hardship and love that they would never
forget.
Persepolis is a graphic novel about a young girl named Marjane who grows up in Iran
during the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. Marjane is highly intellectual, strong willed,
rebellious, stubborn, and a bit immature. During her childhood, the novel explains her
experiences with social classes, revolution, fear, and confusion. Marjane attended a coed French
school because her mother believe her future would depend on her learning French. However,
during the revolution, they were only allowed to focus on Islamic ideology and all western ideals
where prohibit and would even lead to an execution. After the coup dtat and the country was
ran by religious traditions, Marjane started to ask questions about why she had to were the veil
and was told that her hair would send out streams of excitement to men. But, she would rebel and
take it off whenever she could. She started noticing revolution first hand when her parents started
attending protests in which she wanted to go to as well. After the Iranian revolution she became
confused of the teachings because the teacher once told her one thing and started to change
saying that she was wrong before. Through the revolution and the Iran-Iraq war Marjane
experienced loss. Before the new rule, one of her uncles was a communist and was arrested and
executed and another one her uncles dead from a heart attack. Even one of her Jewish friends
was kill by a bomb from Iraq. Not only did she experience loss in the sense of death, but she also
experienced a time where a boy she really like moved away to the United States leaving her
depressed. The novel also explains her immature on/off relationship between her and god. It
shows Marjane actively getting into fights with god and even goes to far as to send him away. As
she grows up she was able to realize the violence at first hand and how the government was
manipulating its people and the media. She started to become afraid when she thought her dad
was killed because he did not come back until hours later and realized that it was a possibility.
Towards the end of the novel her parents decided to send her away to Vienna because she would
be better off. These experiences allowed her to grow up and actually realize what was going on
and how dangerous it was. It shaped her into a rebellious anti-religious government woman.
Just like the novels, I have personal experiences that occurred during my childhood that
shaped me into the person I have become today. During the course of my childhood, I
experienced hardship, challenges, role models, and rebellious behavior. I consider myself to be
polite, sarcastic, and responsible. Growing up as a chubby kid, I was usually the prime target for
bullies. I was constantly getting picked on from preschool to ninth grade. Being bullied my
whole allowed myself to learn how to properly cope with the constant insults which help me get
over it. My parents were very strict when it came to manners in our household. Whenever we
had guest over or we were out at dinner, we always made sure we were practicing the proper
etiquette. After so many year of practicing it became very natural for me to be polite. Unlike the
students who would be extremely rude to me, I would do my best to be kind and mature to
people. I also started to become very quiet and not talk as much because how annoying they
claimed I was. Over the course of my life, I became very inspired by my step father who was an
information technology professional at Getty Images. I considered him to be my role model and I
initially wanted to be like him. I spent my whole life starting from five years old studying
computer science and computer repair. In fact, I grew such an interest I expanded my knowledge
and studied computer programming which went beyond my step dad's abilities. I have developed
several mobile applications and computer software. Later I became interested in computer and
network security as well as malware analysis which became an eye opening experience and
eventually struck me an internship later down the road. Being in a heavily sarcastic family
eventually spread on to me giving me a very dry sense of humor making some of the manners I
learned void. Just as in the novel previously discuss, when I became a little order I too began to
wake up and see the government corruption around us and how the media is censored and is
regulated by the government despite the claims of denial from the government. I discovered how
the government use social engineering skills to manipulate the people into thinking what they are
doing is right. All of this gave me a rebellious attitude to government. All of these factors of my
childhood stuck with me turning me into the person I am today.
To conclude unless it wasn't clear to you, an individual's childhood is a great importance
and what they experience because those experiences is what is going to be following them down
the path with them for the rest of their life. Just like in the novels where the children who grew
up in a revolutionary period turn out to become revolutionary people. Their experiences taught
them many life lessons such as: love, hardship, loss, responsibility and maturity. The same can
be found as well as in my childhood. Childhood has the biggest impact on a person and shapes
them into the individual they are when they reach adulthood.