Throughout her life Nadya has always been an independent thinker who questions the world around her, but the influences of three important figures in her life: her father Andrei, her mentor Prigov, and her husband Petya, were a major contributing force leading up to her involvement with Voina and the eventual creation of Pussy Riot.
Even at an early age, Nadya was refusing to conform to what her society deemed normal. At the age of fifteen, when Nadya was summoned to the principal’s office for “borrowing” a jar of linoleum glue that she had proceeded to put inside the girl’s lavatory, the principal required Nadya to write a letter of apology for the incident. Instead of an apology, Nadya wrote a paper about “her crisis-foster-growth theory” and signed it “Tolokonnikova, Nadezhda Andreevna,” (25) the way …show more content…
Andrei was also very nonconforming, believing himself to be an artist at heart and not simply the doctor that is his profession. His unconventional views lead him to instill the need to question everything into Nadya. In order to do this Andrei explains that one has to “awaken that sleeping volcano” or that “biological, reptilian, sleeping life of the brain.” (22). It’s the part of the brain that makes one deeply consider everything going on around them that Andrei wanted to awaken in Nadya. He wanted his daughter to be an artist like him, someone who is creative and nonconforming to the dull society that worships Putin and carries on like nothing is wrong in their country without debating whether life could be more or better. Andrei tried to teach Nadya these morals and he succeeded in his task. Over the many summers Nadya spent with her father, his lessons paid off when after one particular summer a seven-year-old Nadya came home from her father’s “a wallflower…transformed into a rebel.” (22). Thanks to her father, Nadya was no longer the shy and timid young child she had been. She was now on the path to forming the great protest group: Pussy
Even at an early age, Nadya was refusing to conform to what her society deemed normal. At the age of fifteen, when Nadya was summoned to the principal’s office for “borrowing” a jar of linoleum glue that she had proceeded to put inside the girl’s lavatory, the principal required Nadya to write a letter of apology for the incident. Instead of an apology, Nadya wrote a paper about “her crisis-foster-growth theory” and signed it “Tolokonnikova, Nadezhda Andreevna,” (25) the way …show more content…
Andrei was also very nonconforming, believing himself to be an artist at heart and not simply the doctor that is his profession. His unconventional views lead him to instill the need to question everything into Nadya. In order to do this Andrei explains that one has to “awaken that sleeping volcano” or that “biological, reptilian, sleeping life of the brain.” (22). It’s the part of the brain that makes one deeply consider everything going on around them that Andrei wanted to awaken in Nadya. He wanted his daughter to be an artist like him, someone who is creative and nonconforming to the dull society that worships Putin and carries on like nothing is wrong in their country without debating whether life could be more or better. Andrei tried to teach Nadya these morals and he succeeded in his task. Over the many summers Nadya spent with her father, his lessons paid off when after one particular summer a seven-year-old Nadya came home from her father’s “a wallflower…transformed into a rebel.” (22). Thanks to her father, Nadya was no longer the shy and timid young child she had been. She was now on the path to forming the great protest group: Pussy