How to Live a Good Life
Job from The Book of Job, Sethe from Beloved and Marji from The Complete Persepolis all face hardships in their life. What all of these characters have in common is that they exhibit strategies on how to overcome these challenges in order to live a happy life. Job represents persistence in his beliefs and patience while suffering, Sethe demonstrates how to free oneself from the past and focus on a better future, and Marji exemplifies making the best decisions for personal growth no matter how intimidating and uncomfortable they are. All of these lessons can be applied to anyone and help them to live a happier life.
Job: Patience and perseverance while suffering
A remarkable strategy represented through Job was persistence in his beliefs, despite the opinions or challenges put in place by others. Job is someone who is recognizable in his attempts to avoid evil. However, Satan challenges God to punish Job and he ensures that Job will alter his beliefs to curse God. God elicits various tests to Job to see if he will alter his views. After the first when he receives four messages that his livestock, servants and ten children have all died he still does not curse god and instead continues to praise him. The second test gives him skin sores, and even his wife encourages him to curse God but he does not. Furthermore, Job’s three friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar try to convince Job that he must have committed some sin to deserve these punishments. Job is confident that he has not committed evil and keeps his faith in there being a “redeemer” (Scheindlin 19:25) who can vouch for his innocence to God. In refusal to curse God he says, “As long as my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit” (Scheindlin 27: 3–4). He also shows his confidence that he will eventually get what he deserves by staying faithful when he says, “For he wounds, but he binds up, he shatters, but his hands heal” (Scheindlin 5: 17–18). The opinions of others do not sway Job, and he continues to follow his faith in God and avoid evil. If Job would have turned around and cursed God, he may not have ever encountered god.
This encounter taught him even more about his faith, awarded him the forgiveness of god, and blessed him with his health, twice as much property, new children, and a long life. Job elicits patience while suffering, and important quality to living a good life. Everyone experiences struggles throughout life, but by remaining confident in their faith and themselves one can prosper through these hard times and eventually find peace and reward at the end just as Job did.
Sethe: Accepting the past and moving forward
Sethe also displays an important strategy in Beloved: accepting past mistakes and using them to improve one’s future. Beloved is split into two stories: the present day Sethe and Paul D, and their traumatic past which is relieved in flashbacks. When Paul D reappears at Sethe’s house 18 years after they escaped captivity it is haunted by the ghost of their daughter. This daughter Sethe had murdered, while also failing to murder her other three children. She murdered her because she wanted to spare her a life in captivity. One day, a woman named beloved is waiting on their porch and throughout the story she unlocks many memories that Sethe had buried. The narrator stated, “It amazed Sethe (as much as it pleased Beloved) because every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost” (Morrison 34). The first major memory uncovered was the murdering of her daughter. This caused issues within her family and her reputation in the community. Paul D had experienced the inner peace that comes along with accepting the past.
He wants the same for Sethe and says to her, “‘me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow’” (Morrison 322). The recognition of the past was very hard for Sethe, but she uses it to rewrite her future and put her focus towards caring for her lost child who has come back as beloved. Later in the story, Beloved finally disappears which allows Sethe to heal from the past memories she has been repressing and once consumed her. Learning to forgive, accept and move forward is a very important strategy in living a good life. Holding onto the past was only detrimental for Sethe, and would be for anyone. If one can learn how to accept and heal from the past and not let the memories disrupt their future they can attain a much happier and peaceful life.
Margane Satrapi: Choosing growth
Marji in Persepolis is another example of someone who exemplifies a strategy
to live a better life. In her case, she resembles a coming- of- age story in which she allows herself to discover herself and her identity separate from how she grew up. Growing up, people learn about themselves through where they grow up. Marji spent many of her teen years in Vienna which resulted in her becoming a completely different person than if she grew up with her family in Iran because of the differing cultures. After her time in Vienna she experiences a series of troubling events, like becoming homeless. This results in her moving back to Iran to be with her family. After a couple of years she is faced with the realization that she has outgrown her childhood in Iran, and she is unable to be her true self there. Although it is hard for her to leave her family, she makes the choice that she knows is right for herself and her growth. When she returns to her childhood room and decides she has outgrown it she says, “I decided to take this little problem as a sign. It was time to finish with the past and to look forward to the future” (Satrapi 249).
This strategy of choosing the scarier choice, as opposed to the easier one, because it will bring you to greater places is an important strategy for living a good life. She even says at the end of the book, “Freedom had a price” (Satrapi 344). In life a lot of decisions can be very intimidating, but have a greater reward and be better for one’s development and future. In these instances, it is important to do what Marji did and choose the one that is going to help you grow even if it is not necessarily the easier one.
In conclusion, literature can be a powerful way of demonstrating strategies to overcome hardships in life and live a happier life. A few examples of this are Job from The Book of Job, Sethe from Beloved and Marji from The Complete Persepolis. Job represents persistence in his beliefs and patience while suffering, Sethe demonstrates how to free oneself from the past and focus on a better future, and Marji exemplifies making the best decisions for personal growth no matter how intimidating and uncomfortable they are. All of these lessons can be molded to fit anyone’s life and help them to live a happier life despite challenging circumstances.
Works Cited
“Job 38–42 — God Speaks To Job.” Grow in Christ — Jesus Christ — Bible Study, 11 Mar. 2019, www.rainbowtoken.com/job-38-39-god-speaks-to-job.html.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved: A Novel. , 2004. Print.
“Teen Movie Critic — II.” DreamMachine, www.dreamagic.com/cgi-bin/CriticGen.cgi?author=vivianrose&rname=beloved&url=10-19-98&title=Beloved.
Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. , 2007. Print.
Scheindlin, Raymond P. The Book of Job. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. Print.
