Realizing Importance of Freedom by Reading “Reading Lolita in Tehran”

Today in the United States, many people would have hard time to imagine the life without freedom; many younger Americans may take for granted of this freedom society in the U.S. I have heard many people complaining how liberal today’s society is comparing to old days; I have heard such thing from many older people in countries where I have lived; the U.S., Japan and Ecuador. Thus I was assuming that freedom is spreading and gaining more power all over the world. However, we should remind that even today, some societies do not allowed practice of freedom. We are assigned to read the story, “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi in our English class, through this book; I was suppressed how women in Iran are suppressed by men in the name of religious moral. Women in Iran are obligated to followed the rule which is set by Ayatollah Khomeini regime which were designed to regulate women’s dress code in order to not morally distract men; many laws which are believed to enforce religious morality were set by the regime. Such slanted interpretation of religious ideologies is suppressing women. I was surprised the fact, that women in Iran prior to Khomeini regime had more freedom; which seems like the progress of time is in backward in Iran. Then I realize that my thought is based on my experience and it is very narrow perspective. The process of reading this book acknowledged me struggle of freedom in different society and the gender issue. Since I am man, I was mainly thinking in male point of view, so I did not focus on how difficult to be a woman in Iran; however the story made me realize that importance of thinking style as “what would I feel if I were that person.” Description of how women spend their time in Iran acknowledged me that I lacked to think such way.

This reading experience reminded me that we cannot take the freedom for granted. If we examine the history all over the world, we can see the history of control over the people everywhere in the world. In Japan, people were obligated to fight Second World War 60 years ago, in Ecuador, native people were enslaved by Spaniards, and in the U.S. colored people did not have basic rights to support their freedom until 1960s. Those facts come from not long time ago. People learned important to promote freedom through bloods after bloods. So I realized that how important to support and think in freedom in order to maintain or promote freedom in the society; we should never take freedom for granted. Thus, reading “Reading Lolita in Tehran” is recommendable to be aware of existence of suppressed people in the world, and to appreciate freedom we have. Hopefully many people read this book to realize importance of freedom. All readers can spread the idea of freedom to others and people who heard the idea tells other, and so on. Eventually, the idea will be spread all over the world to promote the freedom globally.