Term Paper on "Marjane Satrapi & Martin Luther King Converging"

/>As for author Marjane Satrapi, she was a young girl (six years old to 14 years old as the book unfolds) who very alertly picked up on the wrongs that go along with social injustice, and she could not understand why persons of one social class could not interact with persons of a different social class. She was an active participant in the large demonstrations against the Shah of Iran in the late 1970s. She learned that her voice could be heard, even though it was just one voice among thousands who were shouting protestations at the same time. She lives through part of the Iraq-Iran war. Her life is a constant series of revelations and changes (like having to wear a veil when the Ayatollah Khomeini took over).

She also learned that forgiveness is necessary even when there has been a terrible injustice done; she has a strong desire to be a revolutionary, not necessarily a violent one, but one who will bring justice and civility to her culture.

She grew up during the last years of the Shah's power and the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in Iran; she was coming of age when the Shah of Iran still held power. The Shah had been placed in power by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States in 1953.

What was life like for Marjane Satrapi as she was growing up? A brief look at the history of her times is appropriate here. Many Americans remember that the U.S.-backed Shah was pushed out of Iran in 1979, and the Ayatollah Khomeini took over the government, which set off the Islamic revolution that Marjane Satrapi writes about. The demise of the Shah also set off a hostage crisis; U.S. embassy staff members were held by pro-Khomeini militants in Teheran for 444 days.

It is not in her book but that incident had a ripple effect on the U.S. political power structure, as Ronald Reagan used the hostage crisis during his campaign for the presidency in 1980 as evidence that President Jimmy Carter was weak on military issues. But not as many Americans probably realize that the CIA had in effect installed the Shah in power in a coup on August 18, 1953, thanks to a plan called "Operation Ajax" put forward by President Dwight Eisenhower. That power move by Eisenhower, to dump the existing president of Iran and install one more favorable to the U.S., was the fuel for the revolution that was to come to Iran, which Marjane Satrapi was caught up in (Kinzer 2003), but managed

Dr. King and Similarities with Marjane Satrapi's Philosophy

The changes that Dr. King was seeking in his role as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the unofficial leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, involved giving African-Americans the freedom to conduct their lives as white people were able to. He wanted all black Americans to have the right to vote, to get good jobs, to be able to ride the bus on any seat that was available (instead of the seats in the back). He wanted schools to be integrated so white students and black students could have an equal education; before the civil rights movement, black schools were not nearly as updated and effective as the schools whites went to. At the time of his death, he had made great progress in bringing social justice to black Americans. He died a martyr, shot down by a racist in Memphis, Tennessee. But he was a real martyr, not the kind of martyrs that Satrapi wrote about on page 115.

The walls were suddenly covered with belligerent slogans," Satrapi wrote. "The one that struck me most by its gory imagery was, 'To die a martyr is to inject blood into the veins of society.'" That concept of martyrdom among Islamic radicals is to kill people and die in the meantime, then you will go to paradise; in King's case, he died for his cause, but his followers did not feel like it helped society at all; quite the contrary.

The revolution is like a bicycle. When the wheels don't turn, it falls" (Satrapi, p. 10). That is very close to the view of radical social change that King held, and it is why his march on Birmingham would not be stopped, could not be stopped, by police dogs that attacked innocent demonstrators, by high-pressure water hoses. The police beat the black demonstrators and the Ku Klux Klan burned down and bombed churches that belonged to black congregations. In Iran, the Shah's military burned down the Rex Cinema in Iran, and those citizens who came and tried to help rescue people who were trapped inside were beaten. The repressive tactics used by the Shah were very similar to those used by the southern police.

And the repressive tactics by the young Islamic militants who took over (with Khomeini) when the Shah was driven out, were just as bad as the tactics used by racist citizens and bigoted police in the south of the United States.

Meanwhile, the policies that led Dr. King to get involved in his movement for justice were based- and the solutions proposed - on the struggle for justice, in a period of time, the late 1950s and early 1960s, in which social change was happening fast in the south, and many people were afraid of change, even though they may not have been outright bigots.

A very good way to show the reasons that King fought for change, his underlying philosophy, his beliefs and values, is to examine closely his well-known Letter From Birmingham Jail. King was of course a minister, and he hoped to get Protestant ministers and Jewish Rabbis and Catholic Priests to support the movement for fairness, for many reasons.

The point his letter is that the houses of worship in the South failed to live up to their own stated ideals, purposes and philosophies. The priests, rabbis, and ministers stood up on the wrong side of the road when it came to morality, human rights, the laws under the Constitution of the United States, and common sense.

The Letter From Birmingham Jail written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 16, 1963, is (and was) more than a mere response to questions posed by eight members of the clergy, all of them Caucasian in ethnicity. The letter in fact was a kind of manifesto for basic human rights under the Constitution of the United States. It is thought of today by many scholars - with perfect validation - as the most powerful justification, explanation, and motivation for the Civil Rights Movement.

Although King's "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, D.C., is probably more well-known (and offered more soaring rhetoric, more memorable lines), it cannot compare to the point-by-point scholarship and theological craftsmanship that went into King's Letter From Birmingham Jail (hereafter referred to as Letter).

Indeed, the Letter is viewed today as far more than an answer to questions posed by members of the Alabama clergy, or as a reasoned response to Alabama Governor George Wallace's militant 1963 pronouncement at his inauguration that he would defy federal law and not permit integration of public schools.

In the Letter, King explains to the clergymen why, as "an… READ MORE