How Nafisi and Solomon Cope Through Literature and Identity

Introduction: Two Paths Through Adversity

Both Azar Nafisi and Andrew Solomon face profound personal hardships and must find ways to cope with circumstances that place them outside the boundaries of what their respective societies consider normal or acceptable. Nafisi confronts the oppressive laws of post-revolutionary Iran, while Solomon grapples with his gay identity in a world shaped by heterosexual norms. Although their challenges differ dramatically in nature, both writers discover that connection with others — through literature, conversation, and empathy — is the key to transcending their circumstances and arriving at a more liberated sense of self.

Nafisi and the Power of Literature Under Oppression

Nafisi copes with the hardships of surviving under Iran's new laws by turning to literature, in particular two novels by Vladimir Nabokov — Invitation to a Beheading and Lolita. These two books act as a support for Nafisi and her secret reading group, who see in them a mirror of their own experiences under a totalitarian government. By reading about experiences that resemble their own, the women discover a world of empathy beyond the walls of their daily lives, and literature becomes like a ladder by which they can scale those walls and the tyranny surrounding them.

Reading serves as both an escape and a refuge — a space in which the women bond, grow as individuals, and come to recognize that there is more to life than what their government is willing to permit. Nafisi must ultimately come to accept herself and her situation, and she does so through books, which help her realize that she can transcend her own reality and need not feel helpless before her surroundings. Reading Nabokov with her friends makes her stronger and gives her greater confidence in her own ability to rise above her environment.

Solomon and the Struggle with Sexual Identity

Andrew Solomon copes with his sexuality by experimenting in different ways — with men and women, and in counseling sessions — trying to understand what troubles him and why. He struggles with the concept of being gay and with his own Puritan sensibility toward sex. He describes how, after his first sexual experience with a man, he boiled his clothes because he felt so dirty and disconnected from the world around him. He likens growing up gay with straight heterosexual parents to growing up deaf with parents who can hear, or growing up blind with parents who can see: there is a fundamental disconnect between what the child experiences and what the parent experiences.

This disconnect leaves the child without an immediate model for understanding his own life. Solomon's response is to reach out — to read about and discuss the experiences of others who, like him, are deemed different or abnormal. He looks at people who are called handicapped, or people born with Down syndrome, and observes that these individuals do not define themselves by the labels others attach to them. To them, the way they are is simply normal, and there is no reason to regard themselves as strange or inferior. This understanding helps Solomon begin to rise above his own self-loathing.