Outline of Chicken with plums by Marjane Satrapi

Chicken with plums is a graphic novel written by Marjane Satrapi. It is based upon a true story it shows a musician’s passion for music and how vital it is for his life. It is a heartbreaking story written with great love and great art and touch of comic. The author elaborates the story as Nasser Ali Khan is passionate musician who is devoted towards music, he had a troubled childhood and his heart is broken as her family did not approve him because he is a musician. His life does not get better but gets worse. He is devastated and sad from life. His master gifts him a musical instrument, a tar; which changes his life. Suddenly there is happiness and liveliness in his life. He begins to live merely and suddenly his life revolves around this tar. He gets a reason to live and tar becomes his life.

Later in life he gets married another woman Nahid, who he does not love and he is never dear to his family either so one day his wife breaks his tar in anger and now his life has no reason and he is devastated over this great loss. He looks for similar piece everywhere and he is heartbroken after finding out there is no other piece like his. This makes him lose hope in life and he is numb and renounces himself of the worldly pleasure and decides to die and confines himself to his bed and waits for his death.

While Nasser Ali Khan is in his bed he thinks about his youth, he visualizes vivid scenes of his family and friends, flashbacks of his childhood and hallucinate flash forwards of his children’s future. The more he thinks about his tar the more he gets depressed and renounces himself of the worldly pleasures, he dies after eight days. It is an epic tale of love, passion, devastation, disappointment, courage, melancholy, dreamy, life and death. (SATRAPI, 2018)

Woman at point zero by Nawal El-Saddawi

Woman at zero point is written by Nawal El-Saddawi who is a psychologist by profession and she met a female prisoner in Egypt in order to study the mental health and capability of female prisoners. A doctor tells her that there is a woman in prison who is remarkable who has killed a man but does not seem like it but she is still unwilling to sign her pardon request. Nawal insists on meeting the woman and she finally get to meet her before a day she was going to die. This woman is known as Firdaus.

Firdaus tells Nawal that she is raised in a poor family and had an abusive father who used to beat her mother and her. She had friends with whom she used to play in the fields and a best friend Mohammadain. They both used to play bride and bridegroom. Firdaus used to get pleasure from sexual experiments with him and one day her mother performed clitoridectomy on her and then after that she is not allowed to play with any of children anymore. Later her parents die and she is sent to live with her uncle in Cairo. After sometime her uncle gets married and his wife did not like Firdaus therefore she was sent to boarding school. Unlike other girls Firdaus did not fantasize about boys or marriage and she is great in studies though.

After graduation no one is there to get her award and later her uncle coms and takes her home. At home she overhears conversation of his uncle and wife who are planning to get her married to an old cousin Sheikh Mahmoud who is sixty years of age. She runs away but returns and marries the old man with facial deformity. One day after a beating she runs away to and meets an owner of coffee shop named Bayoumi who used to lock her in his apartment, Firdaus runs away from there too.  A prostitute named Sharifa finds her by the Nile and uses her body to get money and Firdaus runs away from there and becomes a prostitute and owns her own house and expensive stuff until one day a client named Di’aa tells her that she is not a respectable woman so she gives up everything and start to work as an office assistant. (Satrapi, 1955)

 There she meets a guy named Ibrahim and they fall for each other but he gets engaged to another woman and once again Firdaus is heartbroken. She takes over her status as a prostitute and several wealthy men made their way to her. One day Ibrahim visits her that is when she realized that he just wanted her body and not her love.  A primp tries to kill her but instead she kills him. Later an Arab prince takes her, offer her money and sleeps with her. She gets up rip the money and slaps her. The frightened prince calls the police she gets arrested and is now sentenced to death.

She confesses in front of Nawal that she wants her life to. She is excited to go somewhere else. She claims that men want to kill her because they fear the truth and do not have guts to hear out what she has to tell. She ends her story and police men arrive to execute her. Nawal feels hopeless and ashamed of the world, she sees unhappiness everywhere. This is a story of bravery, courage, power and strength beautifully expressed and written by Nawal who herself is part of it.

M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang of Chicken with plums by Marjane Satrapi

M. Butterfly is a play which is written by David Henry Hwang. It is an award winning which beautifully portrays the beautiful expression of love. It is inspired by Puccini’s opera. The drama  involve two main characters, French diplomat Rene Gallimard and an Opera singer Song Liling who belongs to China and is actually a man impersonating as a woman, while in reality he is an informant of China. The play begins with Gallimard in prison and he insists that audience should first understand the history of Puccini opera.

The plot tells that a Japanese girl is sold to an American army officer in marriage. The American officer Pinkerton marries the Japanese girl Cio-Cio San who is “Madame Butterfly” without any intention of treating her as his wife. Japan has lax divorce laws which mean if he is out of Japan he is not married to her. After sometime he leaves her wife and Madame Butterfly keep waiting for him although people tell her that he is not returning. He sends his new wife and child to Madame Butterfly to inform her that he is not coming back and this breaks her heart and she is devastated so she kills herself.

In 1960 Gallimard meets Song they do not hit off immediately but Song intrigues him and invites him to his show. They begin an affair and start to live together although Gallimard is married to another woman Helga to who he married solely for career. Soon it is revealed that Song is a man and is using Gallimard to extract information of American forces to Chinese government. Gallimard is blinded with act and mystical attribute of Song masked with love and passion.

In the next scene they are seen to live together in France along with the child Song declared to be their son. In the next seen the truth is revealed during Song’s trial and Gallimard is devastated to know the truth for been cheated on for 20 years. In the prison he kills himself telling that it is better to die with honor.The play displays the characters with intense minds, which are mischievous and selfish for their needs and demands.

Thesis of Chicken with plums by Marjane Satrapi

The common thread among these three literary texts is “death”. All three main characters die at the end, kill themselves or desire death. The graphic novel Chicken with Plums displays heartbreaking story of a man who had a terrible life and one he got one reason to live, his tar, it was taken away from him. He was so devastated and heartbroken that he lost hope and chose death over anything. He died within eight days and death consumed life out of him. (Saadawi, 2018)

In the novella woman at point zero by Nawal El-Saadawi the woman has a terrible childhood and adulthood. She was beaten, played, betrayed. Her body was used, heartbroken and soul shattered. She was mistreated, ignored, called things but she stood strong and finally when she thought she enough she killed a man and slapped the Prince she slept with who called the police and got her arrested because in her opinion men are afraid of the truth and cannot see her courage. She was executed in prison by the policemen but she craved death she wanted to be in another world because she had enough of this earth and its people and thought she cannot have any of it anymore, she wanted her life to end and it did.

In the play Madame Butterfly by David Henry Hwang the lead character dies at the end because he is heartbroken. In this case the main character takes his life himself because he is too heartbroken to live anymore. He wanted to end his life, his suffering. He has been in love with a man for 20 years, he was cheated on and used so he chooses death over anything and says he is better be dead than live a life without honor. (Hunry, 1988)

Quotations from the literary theories

Chicken with plums by Marjane Satrapi (last few pages)

“Nasser Ali Khan: And he died?

Azrael: That’s it.

Azrael: Well, I’ll leave you. I have plenty of lives to take today.

Nasser: Azrael!

Azrael: Nasser!

Nasser: Is it a little late for me to go back?

Azrael: It’s not “A little late my dear friend it is TOO LATE.”

Azrael: Don’t worry it won’t be long.”

Woman at point zero by Nawal El-Saddawi  (Page 111)

“Everybody has to die. I prefer to die for a crime I have committed rather than to die for one of the crimes which you have committed.”

Woman at point zero by Nawal El-Saddawi  (Page 112)

“For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them. And truth is like death in that it kills. When I killed I did it with truth not with a knife. That is why they are afraid and in a hurry to execute me. They do not fear my knife. It is my truth which frightens them. This fearful truth gives me strength. It protects me from fearing death, or life, or hunger, or nakedness, or destruction.”

M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang (Page 92)

“Gallimard: Death with honor is better than life…life with dishonor. The love of a Butterfly can withstand many things- unfaithfulness, loss, even abandonment. But how can it face that one sin that implies all others? The devastating knowledge that, underneath it all, the object of her love was nothing more, nothing less than… a man. And I have found her at last. In a prison on the outskirts of Paris. My name is Rene Gallimard- also known as Madame Butterfly.”

Discussion of Chicken with plums by Marjane Satrapi

The main point of these literary theories is death. The lead characters die in the end due to circumstances, they just did not die they embraced it, owned it. They had their reasons to die. Nasser was hopeless; he was devastated and heart broken and had no reason to live for. Music was his passion and after so much that happened with him in his entire life, tar became his life and suddenly it was taken away from him, he wanted to die and he died within eight days. Azrael took away his soul. In the novella written by Nawal El-Saadawi, the main character Firdaus had a terrible life. (Bookgraph.com, 2018)

She was used, beaten, exploited and she fought as much she could she sold he body and built a life but it was taken away from her society who did not let he live in any way when she finally took a life she felt herself telling the truth and she was arrested and to be executed but she was not grieving it, she was craving it. She wanted death and need to end her suffering. She wanted to be somewhere new and better so she refused to sign her pardon request and remarkable woman embraced death. In the play written by David Henry Hwang, Gallimard takes his own life, he embraced death by choice because he was cheated on, used and lied to. He chose honorable death over suffering.

All the characters had terrible experience with life. Their life was not peaceful, beautiful or easy. They faced hardships and embraced death. What made them do that? What made them so attracted by death? Society! The social judgments, unfair attributes of people, lack of love and care made them happy with death.

References of Chicken with plums by Marjane Satrapi

Bookgraph.com. (2018). M. Butterfly Summary & Study Guide Description. Retrieved from http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-mbutterfly/#gsc.tab=0

Hunry, D. (1988). M. BUTTERFLY . 1-58.

Saadawi, N. E. (2018). WOMAN AT POINT ZERO. Retrieved from https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/pointzero/summary/

Satrapi, M. (1955). Chicken with Plums. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9525.Chicken_with_Plums

SATRAPI, M. (2018). Chicken with Plums. Retrieved from https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/160888/chicken-with-plums-by-marjane-satrapi/9780375714757/