Reality is a malleable concept that differs from individual to individual. Due to unique characteristics of personality and differences in how people perceive the world, there is no one definition of an absolute reality. The world around a person can be viewed through any lens the individual pleases. In Sack’s “A Mind’s Eye”, the reader is presented with the various realities of people that have gone blind and how each of them differ in how they choose to approach their blindness. Similarly, in Nafisi’s “Lolita in Tehran”, Nafisi and her students redefined their predicament of living under a totalitarian regime by finding meaning in taking conscious action and embracing their individuality. In Watters “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan”,
…show more content…
In essence, the regime is trying to establish an absolute reality where the only ideology that can exist is the word of the Ayatollah. This effectively turns the population into a mass of monotonous people, all chanting the same message, all believing in form of thinking, and all possessing the same face. Nafisi describes such, “Our world in that living room with its window framing my beloved Elburz Mountains became our sanctuary, our self-contained universe, mocking the reality of the black-scarved, timid faces in the city that sprawled below” (Nafisi 281). The reality of the individual can be manipulated by outside forces or by the individual themselves. Nafisi characterizes the ability to shape our own reality as we choose. Nafisi’s subjective reality was the classroom where she could freely teach her students, transcending any boundaries of censorship and limitations posed by the regime. Similarly, in Sack’s text, he talks about two individuals, Torey and Hull. Both individuals shape their experience of living in the world with blindness through their own ways. Hull’s state of “deep blindness” as he calls it allowed him to happily perceive the world as a place where he was in full control, not the blindness that affected him, “He spoke of deep blindness as an authentic and autonomous world, a place of its own…” (Sacks 330). Similarly, Torey chose to take his blindness and transform it into something that didn’t limit him, rather it empowered him to do things no normal blind man could do. In an abyss of darkened uncertainty, Torey lit the spark of human creativity that would always shine bright, “He felt that his newly strengthened visual imagery enabled him to think in ways that had not been available to him before… (Sacks
In essence, the regime is trying to establish an absolute reality where the only ideology that can exist is the word of the Ayatollah. This effectively turns the population into a mass of monotonous people, all chanting the same message, all believing in form of thinking, and all possessing the same face. Nafisi describes such, “Our world in that living room with its window framing my beloved Elburz Mountains became our sanctuary, our self-contained universe, mocking the reality of the black-scarved, timid faces in the city that sprawled below” (Nafisi 281). The reality of the individual can be manipulated by outside forces or by the individual themselves. Nafisi characterizes the ability to shape our own reality as we choose. Nafisi’s subjective reality was the classroom where she could freely teach her students, transcending any boundaries of censorship and limitations posed by the regime. Similarly, in Sack’s text, he talks about two individuals, Torey and Hull. Both individuals shape their experience of living in the world with blindness through their own ways. Hull’s state of “deep blindness” as he calls it allowed him to happily perceive the world as a place where he was in full control, not the blindness that affected him, “He spoke of deep blindness as an authentic and autonomous world, a place of its own…” (Sacks 330). Similarly, Torey chose to take his blindness and transform it into something that didn’t limit him, rather it empowered him to do things no normal blind man could do. In an abyss of darkened uncertainty, Torey lit the spark of human creativity that would always shine bright, “He felt that his newly strengthened visual imagery enabled him to think in ways that had not been available to him before… (Sacks