Entry #5: Video

1. How would you characterize the Shah of Iran? Why?

• Determined: No matter what his people told him and no matter what they demanded, the Shah was determined to carry out his mission of modernizing Iran.
• Ambitious: He wanted Iran to reach its full potential, he wanted Iran to be a military superpower and to be more Western: he would do anything to get it there, even if his people didn’t share his view.
• Unsympathetic: He didn’t sympathize with his citizens, he thought he knew what was best for them.
• Autocratic: Has the final say in all decisions, and has absolute power in his country. This is one of the reasons he was so disliked.

2. What was the importance of the Shah’s army?

The Shah depends on his army to protect himself and to stay in power. It was also key to Iran becoming a military superpower.

3. Why did the US and Britain see the Shah as an ally?

They saw the Shah as an ally because they wanted to stop the expansion on communism and for this it was important to prevent Iran becoming communist.

4. Why did the Shah divorce his wife? What does this suggest about Iranian royalty?

He divorced her because he couldn’t provide him with an heir. This suggests that the royal family does not marry for love, but simply to keep the family in power and to have children.

Entry #6: "The Sheep" Visual

This visual from the “The Sheep” really caught my attention because I observed that it said to us more than it seems at first. I think this picture not only tells us that Marji’s uncle Anoosh was executed, but also that it was covered by the authorities. By being in the newspapers as “Russian Spy Executed” it means that the government wants to make the people believe he was executed for being a traitor to the state when in reality he was just a man with different ideas. It also tells us that because the government published it, they are warning other revolutionaries of their fate. The swans also add meaning to the visual because it shows a man who made swans out of bread and gave them to his niece, humanizing him deeply and making us see the atrocity of what unjustly happened to him.