Nafisi Sacks
A World of Darkness
The world can be a place full of darkness which can impact one’s everyday life. In Oliver Sacks’ essay, “The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind See”, the people discussed live in a world of darkness due to their lack of sight, while in Azar Nafisi’s essay, “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, the author and her group of students live in a dark would under an oppressive government. No matter what kind of darkness one lives in, he or she must make the best out of the situation. Although living in a dark world can be very tough at times, there are ways to escape. People who live in a world of darkness can find hope in their lives through their imagination. Living in a world of darkness is a constant struggle that can easily consume you. In one example of darkness, a man named John Hull developed cataracts at the age of thirteen and gradually lost his vision as he grew older. By the time he became fully blind, he wasn’t unable to visualize anything. Sacks stated that, “Hull meant not only the loss of visual images and memories but a loss of the very idea of seeing, so that concepts like “here,” “there,” and “facing” seemed to lose meaning for him, and even the sense of objects having “appearances,” visual characteristics vanished” (507). The darkness did not only consume him in a literal state, but also through the loss of his mind and thinking. Hull’s mind went into a state of complete darkness, a state where there was literally nothing he could imagine, nothing he could possibly envision. He lived in such a darkness that he could no longer even envision what the number three looked like in his mind (Sacks 507). Nafisi and her students also lived in complete darkness. The Iranian regime really had the women of the country in complete lockdown. Every aspect of life for women in Iran is controlled to the fullest. For one, a woman must wear black robes covering ones whole body. A Woman has to wear a covering over ones head,
The world can be a place full of darkness which can impact one’s everyday life. In Oliver Sacks’ essay, “The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind See”, the people discussed live in a world of darkness due to their lack of sight, while in Azar Nafisi’s essay, “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, the author and her group of students live in a dark would under an oppressive government. No matter what kind of darkness one lives in, he or she must make the best out of the situation. Although living in a dark world can be very tough at times, there are ways to escape. People who live in a world of darkness can find hope in their lives through their imagination. Living in a world of darkness is a constant struggle that can easily consume you. In one example of darkness, a man named John Hull developed cataracts at the age of thirteen and gradually lost his vision as he grew older. By the time he became fully blind, he wasn’t unable to visualize anything. Sacks stated that, “Hull meant not only the loss of visual images and memories but a loss of the very idea of seeing, so that concepts like “here,” “there,” and “facing” seemed to lose meaning for him, and even the sense of objects having “appearances,” visual characteristics vanished” (507). The darkness did not only consume him in a literal state, but also through the loss of his mind and thinking. Hull’s mind went into a state of complete darkness, a state where there was literally nothing he could imagine, nothing he could possibly envision. He lived in such a darkness that he could no longer even envision what the number three looked like in his mind (Sacks 507). Nafisi and her students also lived in complete darkness. The Iranian regime really had the women of the country in complete lockdown. Every aspect of life for women in Iran is controlled to the fullest. For one, a woman must wear black robes covering ones whole body. A Woman has to wear a covering over ones head,
Cited: Nafisi, Azar. “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books.” The New Humanities Reader: Third Edition. Ed. Richard E. Miller. Rutgers University. 2009, 506-524. Print. Sacks, Oliver. “The Mind’s Eye: What The Blind See.” The New Humanities Reader: Third Edition. Ed. Richard E. Miller. Rutgers University. 2009, 506-524. Print.