sample answer to a paper 2 question written by a teacher. IB examinations encourage use of key words in essays. this essay illustrates the use of key words
Literary works ofee show mee aed womee strugglieg to resolve problems aed eot succeed very
well. To what degree do you fed this to be true ie at least two of the works you have studied?
Whether Marjane Satrapi’s family had a copy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four on their well-
stocked bookshelves is highly doubtull but if they didl Marjane would have seen much in Winston
that she recognised. Her ‘guardians of the revoluton’ are Winston’s ’thought police’l Winston’s
determinaton to rebel mirrors Marjane’s. Marjane struggles and partly resolves her problem by
choosing exile; Winston struggles to resolve his problems and in so doing makes all the wrong
choices on the road to his inevitable death.
Both characters struggle because of their refusal to accept the world they live inl partly because of
who they are. Winston cannot conform to 1984 expectatons because it demands that he swallows
liesl acts out of characterl and puts up with an existence of contnuing deprivaton. Working in the
records departmentl Winston knows that facts are adjusted daily to ft whatever truth the party
wishes to disseminate. He has held the evidence between his thumb and forefnger before it went
down the memory hole: the photograph of three men condemned to death for crimes they cannot
have commited if they were where the photograph proves they were. Winston cannot join the
others in their hysterical demonstratons of near-religious reverence for Big Brother and hatred for
his opponentl Goldsteinl and harbours a well-concealed doubt whether either even exists. He cannot
do these things because it is not in his sceptcal naturel because it is not in his emotonal makeup and
because his core intuiton tells him that his is not the world human beings should accept. He rejects
the very physical fabric of this world. His body tells him that the poor quality equals poor spirit –the
bad gin burns his gulletl the bad razorblades damage his skinl his varicose ulcer makes the climb to
his apartment excruciatngly agonising. This physical struggle mirrors his intellectual and emotonal
hardship.
Marjane similarly rejects her world because of who she is. Having been raised in a family which
prides itself on its rebellious heroesl she sees rebelliousness as a virtue to emulate. Thereforel she
cannot understand why she can no longer go to school with her male classmates or why she and her
friends are forced to wear the veil. She questons her schoolteachers when she suspects them of
indoctrinatng rather than educatng their pupilsl she listens to forbidden music – encouraged by her
parents- and sees all this as a game at frst untl disappearances and deaths show how serious the
fate is of those who challenge totalitarian authority. Satrapil as we knowl recounts her own
childhood and adolescencel as Persepolis is a memoir whereas Nineteen Eighty-Four is fcttous. The
reader can understand how Marji struggles to accept a society that denies her the right to dress as
she wishesl read what she wants and enjoy the music that she prefers. The fault is not the
character’sl it is society’s. This goes for both the real world in Iran and the fcttous world of Oceania.
Both works depict totalitarian regimes with similar ideologies and tactcsl denying the individual any
right to make choices which might threaten the absolute power of the state.
What both Orwell and Satrapi demonstratel thenl is the impossibility for any individual to resolve
problems in such circumstances; it is society that should change and not the individual and the
individual is powerless against the odds of such a society. Society should not repress freedom of
thoughtl educaton should not be synonymous with brainwashingl women’s bodies should not be
seen as temptatons to lead men astray. The truth does materl the largest percentage of the
populaton should not live in poverty and constant war conditonsl and the sole purpose of citzens’
lives is not to keep a small elite in perpetual power.
Because rebellion is the only opton for those who cannot conform in a state where there is no
possibility of regime changel the resoluton to the struggle can only bring one of two outcomes –
exile or death. For Winstonl exile does not even enter his mind. Oceania is Eastasia is Eurasia; the
door of one prison simply opens into the next. Besidesl he initally believes in the existence of a
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