Nafisi and Solomon
Nafisi copes with the hardships of surviving the new laws in Iran by turning to literature, in particular two books by Nabokov -- Invitation to a Beheading and Lolita. These two books act as a support for Nafisi and her book club, who see in the books a mirror of their own experiences under a totalitarian government. By reading about an experience that is similar to their own they can discover a world of empathy outside the walls of their own daily life experience and it becomes like a ladder for them to scale those walls and the tyranny around them. Reading is like their escape in a way and it is also like a refuge for them to bond and to grow as individuals too -- to recognize that there is more to life than what their government is willing to permit them.
Solomon copes with his sexuality by experimenting in different ways, with men and women (in counseling sessions) trying to find what it is that is nagging him and why it is. He struggles with the concept of being gay and with his own Puritan sensibility towards sex and he describes how after his first sexual experience with a man he boiled his clothes because he felt so dirty and disconnected from the rest of the world as a result. He likens growing up gay under straight heterosexual parents to growing up deaf under parents who can hear or growing up blind with parents who can see. There is a disconnect between what the child experiences and what the parent experiences.
Solomon discusses this parent-child relationship in terms of the parent wanting to pass on his life to the child and wanting there to be some kind of immortality in the act of having a child, as though in the child the parent's life was a continuation. But Solomon dismisses this notion as unrealistic because the child is his own person and is not the person who is the parent. He or she has his or her own identity and must come to grips with different problems stemming from different circumstances. The child is not the continuation of the parent -- he is something else entirely,...
Coming to understand helped Solomon to realize that he does not have to define himself according to what others say is normal or natural, because they are not in his shoes or walking the way he does or living the life that he must lead. They are someone else and only he can say what is best for him.
Nafisi also must come to accept herself as well. But she does so through reading books, which helps her to realize that she can overcome her own reality and that she does not have to feel helpless to her surroundings. Reading Nabokov with her friends thus makes her stronger and gives her more confidence in her own ability to transcend her environment. In a way, this is how Solomon also overcomes his own obstacles in his life. But he reaches out to other people and reads and discusses issues of others who, like him, are deemed different or not normal -- people who are called handicapped for instance or people born with Down Syndrome. These are not people who identify themselves by the handicaps by which others identify them. To them, the way they are is normal and so there is no reason to think of themselves as strange or abnormal. This understanding is what helps Solomon to rise up and overcome his self-loathing. He learns that he does not have to fit into some mold foisted on him by others. He is free to be who he wants to be and live how he wants to live.
How he comes to a decision about his own life and how he finds peace with that is by way of identifying with others, such as children who are born blind or children who are born with heart disease. He sees life through their eyes and comes to feel what it would be like to suffer in their shoes. By viewing life from their perspective he understands what it means to not fit in, to be below grade, so to speak. He views this not as a challenge or obstacle but just as how life is and how people need to accept that about others instead of wishing that all their children turn out straight, the way his brother does, which hurts…
