Revised Essay

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Throughout the book the main character- Shirin is questioning why her fate is unfair to her and

why she just can’t live a normal happy life as an average teenager.

Shirin’s resistance was her negative attitude to society. It means that her perception helps her

“fight” against people’s unfair attitude. Shirin thinks that it’s the best option. But why is she still

not able to live a happy life while she keeps fighting with everything around her?

To protect herself from the biased and sometimes even cruel attitude of the society, the main

character- Shirin decides that she can’t trust people around her. This becomes her mental

“armor” and resistance. At first, her resistance works, but Shirin still thinks about why she is not

able to live the life of an average happy teenager, while she keeps blindly fighting with

everything around her…

A turning point in her perception of society was a trauma from her childhood.

After the tragic incident on 9/11 she was assaulted by two boys on her way from school. They

tried to choke her with the hijab and bash her head. Instead of arresting them, cops told Shirin

that she was making herself a target (p.181). They alluded to giving up her cultural features and

attributes, in order to protect herself, because people were scared of the recent terrorist’ act wich

were made by representative of her Religion- Islam. Exactly this case made her think that all

people are a threat to her and now she has to be able to protect and stand up for herself.

Stereotypes about Shirin’s nation and religion made her think that people don’t want to see

her actual personality. During the whole story she is faced with supid questions and insults from

many people. But Shirin forgets that not all of them are like this and tries to push every person
away, even those who are interested in her life and personality. Shirin was so worried about

being stereotyped and finally realized that she had “begun to stereotype everyone around her

''(p.110).She doesn’t want to give people a chance, pushing them away from herself, and that’s

the main reason why she is still alone.

In chapter 12 Shirin begins to partly understand that not all the people are bad actually,

mostly relationships with them depend on her attitude. . She judges everybody thinking in

advance that a person is going to be mean to her.That’s why her brother’s friend- Jacobi, seeing

what was actually happening with her, advises her to try to be happy and says that being negative

and angry all the time will kill her sooner or later. (p. 108) Shirin trusts but she is still thinking

that “the most optimistic attitude wouldn’t change the world we lived in” (p.119).

Ocean has a big impact on her life during the story. He starts to be Shirin’s first love and

affects her self esteem and confidence in a good way. In his own example he demonstrates that

it’s possible to be happy and doesn't depend on society's attitude. She doesn’t understand his

words at first, but at the end of the story she finds the key moment of her problems: she treated

and thought about others like she didn’t want to be treated. She was making “sweeping

statements about who she thought they were and how they lived their lives.”(p. 309)

In conclusion, we see that Shirin’s “armor” has been forming for many years of

misunderstanding, conflicts and an unfair attitude. She thinks that she always fights and resists,

but there is nothing to fight with. All these years she has been stopping herself from integration

into this supposedly dangerous society…