Topic 1 – Character

In chapters one to seven we were taught about Marinas family, friends, religion, ethnicity and about her past.  Marina Nemat is a young girl in Iran during the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution. Marinas has a older brother, mother, father and had a grandmother who died but made a huge impression on Marina. Her family comes from Russia but moved to Iran when her grandmother had to make a choice between her county or her love. On January in 1982, Marina Nemat, at sixteen years old, was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death for rebelling against the government. In the chapters it tells us that she lives a middle class life in Tehran. Marina has school, summer parties, and her crushes specifically on Andre the churches organ player and family. When she was arrested all of this was lost. When Marina is interrogated we learn she is compassionate when they blindfold her, instead of crying like many would she comforts the girl beside her even though she doesn’t no what is going to happen. I learnt she was brave when she was integrated like many others who dared to speak out. However unlike them she had never said anything and made sure not to give her friends away. In chapter five you see her true heart when she is facing death and worrying about her friend from school and hoping she is okay instead filling with self pity like many other teenage girls would do. I learnt the Marina was taken to Evin prison in Tehran. She was never killed there because here personality was so appealing to Ali one of the guards. Ali had gotten her off being killed but Marina was still sentenced for life.