Playtime Case

Playtime!

Sometimes in life, one develops habits to deal with certain aspects of one’s world that one doesn’t necessarily like. For example, a person might become shielded, or guarded against horses if they had a bad experience with horses when they were younger. In Persepolis and To Kill a Mockingbird, both Scout and Marji have to learn to develop coping mechanisms or ‘habits’ to deal with the difficult environment they live in.

When one is a child, one thing occupies the brain 95% of the time. Play. Fun. A child loves to have fun, and children play with whatever toy they can get their hands on. Marji and Scout use fun as a way to accept and deal with hard news and harsh realities. In Marji’s case, when she hears from her parents that they don’t support the Shah, she decides to take revenge by ‘punishing’ and ‘torturing’ her classmate, whose father had been in the Savak, or the secret police of the Shah. “In the name of the dead million, we will teach Ramin a good lesson!” (45) Unable to comprehend and face the information that someone could, or would, kill a million people, Marji copes with it by turning it into brutal ‘game’. Likewise, Scout does the same with the information she receives about Boo Radley and his seclusion. She plays a game with Jem and Dill taunting and making fun of the Radleys. Both Marji and Scout do not understand in full what they are hearing and what they are doing. They both try and turn information they don’t want to deal with into entertainment for themselves, rather then try to fathom it.

Marji and Scout are both living in difficult worlds. Marji’s is in the midst of a revolution, and Scout is dealing with racism on a daily basis. No child should have to deal with such heavy issues every day. And, understandably, Scout and Marji don’t want to deal with it. So they deal with their hardships the way any child would- with fun.