Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

In Part 2, Nafisi recalls her life in the years before the Iranian Revolution. She describes her upbringing as privileged, with a long lineage full of distinguished forebears “known for their contributions to literature and science” in Iran (84). As a child, she is educated at private schools in England and Switzerland; as a university student, she studies at the University of Oklahoma, where she finds herself attracted to left-wing revolutionary ideologies. Nafisi depicts herself as something of an outsider in her revolutionary circles, claiming that she “tried to reconcile [her] revolutionary aspirations” with the “lifestyle” she favors by nature, including dressing in a traditionally feminine way and “refus[ing] to cut [her] hair” (85).

She writes that she continued to read “counterrevolutionary writers—T. S. Eliot, Austen, Plath, Nabokov, Fitzgerald” (85-86). She claims that while her revolutionary activities gave her “an ideological framework” for channeling her passions, she “felt alienated from the movement itself” (86).

Nafisi recalls her teaching days in the wake of the Iranian Revolution at the University of Tehran. She describes the political atmosphere on campus as heated, with “a turf war going on between different political groups” (89), especially between the hardline Islamic revolutionaries and their more moderate or secular counterparts. The regime’s increasing intolerance for dissent and ambiguity begins to filter down into Iranian academia and culture, with foreign books becoming harder to find and buy and with some of her students becoming uncomfortable with texts that challenge their points of view. The tensions within the classroom reach a peak when some of the Islamic revolutionary students object to The Great Gatsby, which they believe promotes lax morality due to themes like adultery and excessive consumerism. In response to these objections, Nafisi and her students host a mock “trial” in which Nafisi pretends to be the novel, Nassrin, a female student, is her defense lawyer, and Mr. Nyazi, a male student, undertakes the prosecution.

During the trial, Mr. Nyazi argues that in Iran, writers “play the same role as […] faithful soldiers” in promoting the “correct” Islamic ideology desired by the regime (125). He describes the regime as “purgin[g] the country of decadent Western culture” and objects to The Great Gatsby for “preach[ing] illicit relations between a man and woman” (125, 126). In response, both Nassrin and Nafisi argue that novels must be allowed to function apart from official ideological control by exploring ideas and experiences freely. Nassrin argues that The Great Gatsby “shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in” (129). She adds that the novel does not necessarily celebrate wealth or adultery, but “judge[s] [characters] in terms of their honesty” while exposing the dangers of materialism and affairs (130).

Nafisi, speaking as the novel, defends both it and literature in general on the grounds that literary texts are ultimately rooted in “empathy” (132): They display many different points of view and invite the reader to think critically about important issues. As Nafisi states: “You don’t read Gatsby […] to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and marriage and fidelity are” (133). Although there is “no formal verdict cast” at the end of the mock trial, Nafisi is pleased to see her students arguing animatedly even after class has ended (136).

Throughout Part 2, Nafisi reflects on how The Great Gatsby embodies the dangers of pursuing dreams and trying to make them a reality. She compares the tragedy of Gatsby’s character to the plight of the Iranians, describing their revolutionary ambitions as “this terrible, beautiful dream, impossible in its actualization, for which any amount of violence might be justified or forgiven” (144). Nafisi describes her own growing political disillusionment as the regime becomes more violent and repressive and as the students stage protests in vain. She begins to feel deeply alienated from the political activities taking place around her, writing: “I felt tired and frightened […] I was scared of some lack, as if the future were receding from me” (149).