Samad Behrangi: His Life and Work

[Behrouz]

Samad Behrangi: His Life and Work

By: Nafisa Abd El-Sadek

Samad Behrangi was a writer who used children's stories as a way of
expressing his feelings about the wrongs of society during the rule of the
last Shah of Iran. Iraj Bashiri identifies him as a social critic:

'More than anything, Behrangi was a social critic whose major effort was
concentrated on bringing about change in the educational system of the
country. This is evident from the themes of his works that contrast the rich
and the poor, the village and the town, and the educated and the illiterate.
'

Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak has made a similar observation:
'.a high degree of fidelity to social experience marks the peaks of
twentieth century Persian fiction everywhere. Closer to us in this range,
looms the figure of Samad Behrangi whose stories emphasize outright
revolutionary action as the author's vision of the solution to the problem
of social injustice.'

Samad Behrangi is a writer who has gained a lot of attention outside of Iran
as well as becoming a cult figure inside Iran before the Islamic Revolution.
He was born in the southern division of Charandab, Tabriz, commercial and
administrative capital of Azerbaijan Province, in July 1939. In 1955 he
attended the local Teachers' Training College and in 1957, on completion of
his course, which was based on modern and American theories on education,
Behrangi became a teacher in a village school. The school consisted of one
room and a toilet. The windows needed repairing and the roof leaked on rainy
days and during winter. The school was located outside the village itself
and the pupils walked to school. In winter those who did not have proper
shoes were forced either to stay at home or work in a neighboring carpet
factory.

Behrangi earned a BA in English from Tabriz University during the period he
was occupied with teaching. As a result of his dissatisfaction with
available teaching materials he wrote a first-grade reading book for the
village children which reflected their own lives. The government prohibited
its publication. He collected Azerbaijan folklore and prepared a book of
poems from it; again publication was prevented. He then collected
Azerbaijani folktales and, with the help of his best friend Behruz Dehqani,
translated two volumes of tales into Persian and published them. Despite
these attempts to silence his voice by withholding publication rights in his
own language, as a result of his perseverance Behrangi finally started to
have his work published. The conditions were not ideal and the limitations
must have been hard for Behrangi to bear, as Bashiri notes:

'Behrangi's native tongue was Azeri Turkish and, personally, preferred
writing in Azeri over Farsi. He was not, however, allowed to publish in
Azeri; he, therefore, made his writings available by translating them into
Persian.'

Behrangi translated the works of such famous authors and poets as Nima
Yushij (1890-1960), Ahmad Shamlu (1925-), Mehdi Akhvan-Sales (1928-1990),
Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967), and M. Azad (1933-) from Persian into
Azerbaijani, demonstrating his great linguistic capabilities in both
languages. Unfortunately these remained unpublished due to the government's
prohibition of publishing works in Azerbaijani. Behrangi's work includes
critical essays about the education system, collections of folktales, short
stories based on popular folk themes, and original stories which deal with
various social aspects of village life and the problems of peasants who have
migrated to the cities.

Although he may be better known for his children's stories and folktales,
Behrangi also wrote numerous essays, very different in tone from his
stories. His essays criticized the Iranian education system and dealt with
Azerbaijani history, the Azeri Turkish language, children's literature,
village life, grammar, and so on. He wrote about a variety of philosophical,
moral and sociological issues, often discussing specific societal and
educational problems and giving logical, well thought out strategies for
dealing with them, based on his own experiences. A number of the essays have
a pedagogical tone, notably those dealing with issues such as teaching
methodology and curriculum development, while others, especially the ones
concerning village life, are descriptive.

An example of one of his curriculum projects was an alphabet book; a primer
to teach Persian to Azerbaijani speakers. Despite his love for his own
language, Azerbaijani, Behrangi recognized the necessity for Azerbaijani
children to learn Persian. He put a lot of thought into the methodology
necessary for this task. The area of methodology had not been sufficiently
addressed by previous educators and the materials available at the time
taught all learners using the same methods whether or not they were first
language Persian speakers. Behrangi believed that Azeri Turkish speakers
should not be taught Persian in the same way as native Persian speakers. He
made a detailed proposal for teaching Persian to Azeri Turkish speakers in a
methodical and carefully planned way, acknowledging the linguistic
differences of the two languages and building on the students' knowledge of
vocabulary that was common to both Azeri Turkish and Farsi alike.

Behrangi's close affiliation with the Tabriz branch of the Feda'iyan and, in
particular, with his close friend, confidant, and coauthor, Behruz Dehqani
(who was later tortured to death by the SAVAK in the summer of 1973 for
being a leading member of the Feda'iyan), helped to strengthen the bond
between the underground activists and the literati. He used to meet writers
such as Gholam-Reza Sabri-Tabrizi, Behruz Dehqani, and Gholam-Hossein Sa'edi
at his publishers, Intisharat-e Shams (Shams Publications) in Tabriz while
the government stepped up its repression of writers through frequent
interrogations and constant harassment of booksellers believed to be selling
protest literature. In September 1968 Behrangi is said to have drowned while
swimming in the River Araz.

His most important work, The Little Black Fish won awards after his death at
Bologna and Bratislava International Literature Festivals in 1969. In the
fall of 1971 the University of Tehran sponsored a special Behrangi festival.
All of Behrangi's writings, with the exception of The Little Black Fish were
officially banned by the security police in charge of censorship in 1973. A
rich and beautifully illustrated edition of The Little Black Fish was
produced by the Kanun-e Parvaresh-e Fekri-ye Kudakan va Nojavanan (The
Society for the Intellectual Nourishment of Children and Youth) under the
patronage of the Empress Farah. Later the Samad Behrangi Award presented
five prizes in the form of educational equipment for works by children and
young adults .

Behrangi's experiences as a teacher in rural Azerbaijan had a crucial
influence on his writings. He taught in poor village schools, predominantly
in Azerbaijan, for 11 years and during this time traveled widely in Iran.
Most of those acquainted with Behrangi's work believe that his untimely
death at the age of 29 under very suspicious circumstances was no accident.
The official version below met with refutations in the memorial issue of the
literary journal Aresh:
'The regime's version of his death: Drowning while crossing the Aras River,
which forms part of the boundary between Iranian Azerbaijan and Soviet
Azerbaijan, either as a suicide or as a desperate attempt to cross over into
the soviet Union.'

David Nissman is quite unequivocal when describing the tragedy:
'... like the history of every people on the face of the earth, this history
also carries with it its own martyrs and victims - the Southern Azeri
patriot Semed Behrangi, murdered by Savak in his attempt to swim to the
northern bank of the Araz River, which marks the border between Iran and the
Azerbaijan Republic.'

The truth of the circumstances of Behrangi's death may never be known. The
Shah's dictatorship might well have been unable to tolerate the threat of
the widespread influence of his work. His stories were banned by the
monarchy's censorship bureau in the early seventies. Later, Behrangi's
stories were published and propagated in large numbers during the period of
freedom following the people's revolution of 1979, as he had become an
inspirational figure for many during the demonstrations leading up to the
revolution.

Behrangi's Stories

After this brief look at the events in Samad Behrangi's short life, it is
time to turn to the part of his work which has most attracted the attention
of critics and commentators. Consequently, the next section of the paper
will review some of Behrangi's short stories. In giving a synopsis and
commentary, and offering examples of some of the comments found in secondary
sources relevant to the particular stories, it will seek to determine what
kind of view they portray; idealistic and utopian or realistic and
pessimistic, and to see the kind of symbolism he has used in them and how it
relates to his era in Iran.

Five of his stories have been translated and gathered together in the
collection The Little Black Fish & other Modern Persian Stories, and this
collection forms the basis of the works examined in this paper along with
one story from Qesse-ha ye Behrangi, and sections from his essays on
education and children's literature. The present section deals with the
following stories:
1) 24 Restless Hours (Bist-o-chahar Sa'at dar Khab va Bidari).
2) The Old Woman and her Golden Chicken (Pir-e zan va Juje-ye Tala'i-esh).
3) The Bald Pigeonkeeper (Kachal Koftarbaz).
4) The Little Sugarbeet Vendor (Pesarak Labu Forush).
5) The Little Black Fish (Mahi-ye Siyahe Kuchulu).

1) 24 Restless Hours (Bist-o-chahar Sa'at dar Khab va Bidari).
The story 24 Restless Hours is told by a fictitious country boy living
temporarily in Tehran with his father. This is his account of their last 24
hours in Tehran before they return to their hometown. The story falls
between two genres: hard social realism conflicts with the fantastic dream
world of the narrator who spends his days competing fiercely in the
dog-eat-dog world of the streets, and his nights on magic journeys with a
toy camel that he covets in a shop window. But the camel is eventually sold
and the boy's dream stolen. Behrangi writes as an introduction to this
story:

'Dear Readers,
I didn't write the story 24 Restless Hours to set an example for you. My
purpose is rather that you become better acquainted with your fellow
children and think about a solution to their problems.'

Latif, a young, illiterate boy, is the main character in the story. He has
come to Tehran with his father to try and earn some money for their family
back home in the provinces. Latif's Father has been out of work for several
months, so he decides to go to Tehran, hoping to meet up with others from
their hometown who are working in the capital as vendors of ice, oranges,
clothing and other goods. He buys a handcart and sells vegetables, sleeping
on the cart in the street at night. Latif helps his father and sometimes
sells small items on his own, such as charms and chewing gum, returning to
their handcart at night to sleep. He passes the days with his friends Qasem,
Ahmad Husayn and Zivar's son, other poor street children, sometimes gambling
and getting chased by the police; but he doesn't beg, as his pride will not
let him. He smashes a shop window because the shop-owner upsets him by
intimating that he is a beggar.

A car driver knocks him down in the street and then shouts abuse at him.
Dodging the park guards, the boys wash in the water gutter at City Park
gate, but still 'don't smell clean like the rich children'. Latif sees that
only because of his poverty and not for any other reason he is treated
unjustly. He feels very strongly the unfairness of this. His stress and
frustrated energy surfaces as a wish to fight and show how tough he is,
using new Tehrani slang recently picked up on the streets. Despite his tough
exterior, he feels lonely and misses his mother very much and spins dreams
around a huge toy camel he sees in a toyshop window in Naderi St. He
fantasizes that the camel is his and they go on trips at night, playing
music, flying to the villas of North Tehran where the rich people live and
where he finds all the toy animals from the toyshop waiting for him to join
the feast. He dreams that he eats but never gets satisfied. He wakes up to
hard reality when the street sweeper sweeps dust into his face. The camel is
his fantasy friend, voice of resistance against social injustice, teacher,
leader of the masses and the only thing in Latif's life which gives him any
joy or hope of escape. At the end of the 24 hours he goes to see it one last
time before leaving Tehran but his hopes and dreams are crushed when his
camel is sold and is given to a little rich girl who drives away with it in
front of his eyes, an event which tips him over the edge of reason. He
chases the car and jumps on it but is pushed off and left bleeding in the
street, wishing he could get his hands on a machine gun.

The final image of this tale is that the boy has reached the stage where he
is ready to fight to overturn the unbearable situation that he finds himself
in, but he still does not have the means to fight back. In order to acquire
the means he must still break the laws of the present unjust society as
there is no legitimate way for him to achieve his goal. This leaves a
somewhat negative impression at the end of the story.

2) The Old Woman and her Golden Chicken (Pir-e zan va Juje-ye Tala'i-esh).

The main characters of this tale are an old woman, a golden chicken and a
spider. The old woman is alone in the world except for the chicken, which we
are told, she has found in her dreams. The old woman makes body scrubs and
sells them at the public baths to make her living. The golden chicken keeps
the old woman's humble home and small garden free of ants and spiders. No
ants, not even the big ones, dare to enter the old woman's house because of
the chicken, who can even handle the nosy cats who mess everything up
looking everywhere for scraps of meat.

The old woman's garden has a thick, leafy walnut tree. When the walnut
season arrives and the wind blows the walnuts to the ground the chicken
happily cracks them open and eats them. In between some empty bottles on the
windowsill a spider has spun a web and laid her eggs there. These bottles
previously contained vinegar and mint derivatives which the old woman used
to make and sell, but they are now empty. The spider is terrorized by the
chicken who warns him that she will eat him one day. She has already eaten
some of the spider's babies, and prevents any ants from getting caught in
his web by crushing them as soon as they reach the windowsill.

One night the spider comes into the old woman's dreams and warns her that
the chicken is squandering her wealth and belongings. At first the old woman
refuses to hear any complaint against her golden chicken, but when the
spider points out that if the golden chicken cared for her at all she would
keep some walnuts for the old woman to sell so she could eat some decent
food for once, then she begins to believe him. She wakes up from the dream
in a terrible mood and starts planning what to do to the chicken. She doesn'
t leave the house as usual to sell body scrubs but sits there watching the
golden chicken in the garden. The chicken goes to the bottom of the walnut
tree and asks it to drop some walnuts for breakfast. The walnut tree shakes
some ripe walnuts from its branches but before the chicken can eat a bite,
the old lady shouts at her not to touch them as she wants to sell them and,
kicking her away, she pockets all the walnuts. The chicken sits under the
tree until the old lady goes back inside the house and then asks the tree to
shake down some more walnuts. This time the chicken manages to eat some, but
the old lady sees her and comes out threatening to show her what she will do
to a walnut thief. The old lady puts the barbeque on, catches the chicken
and holds her over it until she is severely singed. The walnut tree shakes
hard and rains down walnuts on the old lady's head, which makes her let go
of the chicken. When she goes to pick up the walnuts she finds that they
have all turned to stone. She goes back into her house and sits and watches
the chicken who has retired to a corner of the garden to cry. From noon
until evening the wind blows and knocks walnuts off the tree until the old
lady's garden is filled with walnuts, but the chicken still sits and the old
lady still stares at her until suddenly the voice of the spider rings out,
congratulating the old lady on putting the chicken in her place and telling
her to collect her walnuts so she can eat. The old woman picks up her shoe
and throws it with all her might at the spider, killing him instantly. Then
she dries her tears with the corner of her chador and goes to the chicken
begging her to eat some walnuts. Despite being singed and upset, the chicken
cannot refuse the old woman when she sees that her usual kindly expression
has returned. When the old woman promises to put some ointment on her wound
they go back to the house and eat shelled walnuts for their dinner. The next
morning the old woman clears up all the spider's webs and throws them away.

This tale appears to give the depressing message that change can only be
effected for a short time before the return of the status quo, that
oppression and exploitation is the norm and that any relief from this
condition can only be temporary. The story ends with defeat for the spider
and victory for the chicken with the old woman left in the same situation as
before. It seems to give an opposite message to that of an idealistic
resolution, showing that the status quo will prevail despite challenges to
it.

3) The Bald Pigeonkeeper (Kachal Koftarbaz).

Kachal, the hero of the story was a poor, but wise boy who lived with his
mother, a goat and some pigeons in a small hut beside the king's palace.
Kachal collected firewood and dry bushes to feed the goat. His mother spun
wool on her spinning wheel. Between them they managed to make a living. From
her balcony the princess was able to watch Kachal's pigeons fly and little
by little they fell in love. Kachal could never show his feelings, as he
knew he could never marry the daughter of the king. The princess became ill
from lovesickness and no one could cure her. The king, however, learned her
secret and became furious, threatening to banish her from the kingdom. He
decided to take matters into his own hands and sent soldiers to kill all
Kachal's pigeons. They carried out his order and also beat Kachal and broke
the leg of his mother's spinning wheel. A few days later Kachal was
recovering under the mulberry bush in their yard when he heard two pigeons
whispering to each other and talking about how he could bring his pigeons
back to life. He jumped up and followed their instructions and all his
pigeons woke up and flew away to return after a while with a magic hat that
made the wearer invisible. Kachal's mother begged him not to use it to touch
forbidden property, and he promised not to touch things that were forbidden
to him. He put on the hat and went to the district where the rich factory
owners lived. He asked himself how one factory owner by the name of Haji
Quli had gained his wealth and money and deduced that as it came from the
work of the workers it should rightfully belong to them and not to Haji
Quli. With this in mind he entered his house and saw him in the garden
taking afternoon tea with his wives. His hunger got the better of him when
he saw the honey, cream, toast and tea in front of Haji Quli and he started
to eat and drink some of it. Everyone was terrified and started screaming
and praying and running away. Kachal then went into the house, took all the
money from the safe as well as other valuable items and then went and
distributed everything among the workers, telling them that it belonged to
them. A little money was left over and he used this to buy food.

Haji Quli and the other rich landowners went to the king to ask him to
protect their property from Kachal. This gave the king the excuse he needed
to launch an all-out attack and he sent his entire army to deal with Kachal.
In the battle Kachal's pigeon's defended him by showering goat droppings on
the soldiers' heads. Their commander-in-chief was wounded, many of the
soldiers' heads were broken open and they were plunged into a state of shock
and confusion, until finally they were forced to retreat. Kachal then
visited the princess in the palace while wearing the hat. It was knocked off
and he was captured, but managed by a ruse to get it back. He was locked in
the palace by the king who ordered all the doors to be closed but the
princess saved him by running to his mother's house for help. The pigeons
came and bombarded the palace for hours until the king finally admitted
defeat and had the doors opened. The king sent servants to throw his
daughter out of the house, but they found that she had already left. The
princess had run away to join Kachal. His mother taught her how to spin wool
and they lived happily ever after.

This story follows the opposite line from the usual rags-to-riches scenario.
It shows that the riches to be gained from righteousness are not always
material ones, but treasures such as love and peace and justice which can be
greater and more meaningful and valuable in leading a rich and happy life.
The king, while giving support to Haji Quli and the other rich factory
owners, suppressed social relationships and love. He was prepared to kill
the pigeons, who symbolized freedom, and Kachal, who represented reason or
wisdom, as well as to banish his daughter. The idealistic resolution here is
highly unlikely and quite unconventional in that it ends with a
riches-to-rags result. The princess ends up estranged from her father and
separated entirely from her past life and everything that was familiar to
her. It could be argued that as her father was quite unconcerned about her
happiness and on the verge of banishing her forever anyway it was not such a
great loss. This could stand as a metaphor for the condition of women in
society; as long as they toe the line and do what they are told by the
powerful male members of their family they are protected and taken care of,
but if they should act upon their own wishes they become the enemy and are
treated worse than dogs.

4) The Little Sugarbeet Vendor (Pesarak Labu Forush).

This story is told from the point of view of the new teacher in a village
school and concerns events which have already happened. The subject of the
story is Tarvardi, the sugar beet seller, a young boy who arrives at the
school to sell his sugar beets one day. The teacher invites him inside the
classroom to warm himself and treats him kindly. The children also seem to
be very sympathetic towards him and to respect him. The teacher learns
Tarvardi's story little by little from the other students and from Tarvardi
himself on his subsequent visits to the school. Tarvardi's mother is
paralyzed and cannot walk. Tarvardi's father, Asgar Aqa the Smuggler, has
been killed by gendarmes. When he was alive the family owned a house and
lived comfortably, but after his death they have become penniless. Tarvardi
and his elder sister, Sulmaz, are forced to go and work in the carpet
workshop of Hajji Qoli Farshbaf. They have been working there for several
years when their mother falls ill. Hajji Qoli starts to pay too much
attention to Sulmaz, staring at her, sometimes putting his hand on her head
and laughing. One week on payday, Hajji Qoli gives Sulmaz ten rials extra,
telling her that it is for their sick mother. When they go home to their
mother she tells them not accept any more money from him. The next payday
they go to collect their pay after everyone else as Hajji Qoli has told them
to come when he is alone. He gives Tarvardi an extra fifteen rials, saying
that the next day he will come to their house to talk to their mother.
Tarvardi throws the money back at him and tells him that they do not need
extra money. Hajji Qoli tries to push the money into Sulmaz's hand but she
runs out in fear. Tarvardi flies into a rage and, picking up a weaver's
knife from the table, throws it, cutting Hajji Qoli on the face. When
Tarvardi goes home he finds Sulmaz crouching beside her mother crying. That
night the village headman is sent by Hajji Qoli to ask for Sulmaz's hand in
marriage. Tarvardi's mother says that Hajji Qoli has a wife and children in
town and concubines in four other villages and that he is not interested in
having family connections with the villagers, only in acquiring another
concubine. In her opinion he is like a huge pig; fat and squat and ugly. She
says that even if she had a hundred daughters she wouldn't give one of them
to that hyena. The headman is sympathetic but warns her that the
consequences of refusing Hajji Qoli are likely to be grim, as he will turn
Tarvardi over to the gendarmes, among other things. Sulmaz is terrified and
refuses to go back to work, so the next day Tarvardi goes there alone. Hajji
Qoli is standing by the door of the workshop fingering his worry beads.
Tarvardi is afraid to pass but Hajji Qoli tricks him, saying that he is not
going to hurt him and then as Tarvardi is about to go through the door Hajji
Qoli grabs him and starts beating him. Tarvardi runs to get his hands on the
weaver's knife to kill him, but luckily for Hajji Qoli the workers restrain
Tarvardi and carry him home by force. The family survive by selling their
goat, Sulmaz goes to work for the baker, whose son is her fiancé and
Tarvardi does whatever work he can find. Several years later the teacher
returns to the same village and finds Tarvardi tending forty or fifty goats
and sheep on the mountainside. He asks his news and Tarvardi tells him that
his sister has gotten married and that he himself is now saving up for his
own marriage.

This story is an example of social realism set in a more recent time period
and missing the magical and fantastic elements of the previous stories
described. It has a different approach and style of writing from Behrangi's
other stories; it describes reality with all its flaws. The reader gets the
feeling of being present at the scene, learning all the ugly and unpleasant
details, which are, however, somewhat de-emphasized, as they have already
happened in the past. The violent incident is in the middle of the story and
so is not perceived as the most important part.

This story reflects the personal observations of its author. John West
describes it as 'a deceptively simple, descriptive piece drawn directly from
Behrangi's experience as a village schoolteacher.' It thus reflects Behrangi
's experiences in the schools as the teacher finds out how village society
works, but it can also be used as an allegory to encompass the conditions
found in the whole of Iran. Each key character of the story could represent
a social group: the politicians are influenced by the economic sector and
bow to the interests of the big business organizations. The people with
economic power, not the politicians, are the ones who are actually in
charge. If action is taken against the politicians the economic system
survives. The real relationships which run Iranian society will not change
and the system will continue.

In the story the teacher is a totally unimportant character, a mere
bystander. His name is never mentioned and he performs no purpose as agent,
as the reaction and outcome of the situation had already happened before his
arrival. He is just an onlooker, a plot device, as are the students. The
story is revealed by the boys telling the teacher about Tarvardi's life. In
doing this they present a means of telling the reader how the village works
and who really wields the power. The village headman, in theory the leader
of the village, is seen as Hajji Qoli's lackey. Despite professing
disagreement with the situation he still advises Tarvardi's mother to let
Hajji Qoli take her daughter away and cannot promise to control the
gendarmes.

Behrangi implicitly criticizes religion in this and other stories. The
characters who are Hajjis are often portrayed as abusers of power. He shows
Hajji Qoli as an evil man who made a lot of money from his evilness and was
able to use this to go to Mecca on Haj and gain even more power and respect
in the community. The poor villagers could never hope to amass the kind of
funds necessary for such a trip. Behrangi shows that in reality religion
helps the system rather than challenging it and that people seek meaning in
religion because they cannot change anything. He shows it as the opium of
the people.

The ending or epilogue of The Little Sugarbeet Vendor at first glance seems
to have been added as an afterthought, but it is important to the story.
This device of later resolution is not used in the other stories. Two
possible interpretations could be derived from it; the first being that, in
gaining material wealth, (forty sheep and goats are implied to belong to
Tarvardi, but there is no definite proof of this. He could be looking after
someone else's flock) Tarvardi becomes part of the capitalist system and
therefore the capitalist system succeeds. The second possible interpretation
could be that both Tarvardi and Sulmaz in becoming independent materially
and, having an independent material base, have found for themselves an
alternative place in their society.

5) The Little Black Fish ( Mahi - ye Siyahe Kuchulu ).

This is the most famous of all Behrangi's stories, both within Iran and
internationally. It is a story with universal appeal and has been likened in
this respect to stories such as Antoine de St. Exupery's Le Petit Prince and
Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull. In 1969 The Little Black Fish
won international awards at literature festivals in Bologna and Bratislava
which further enhanced its reputation back home. As a result of this
prestige it was the only story of Behrangi's which managed to escape
censorship. There have been first and second English editions of stories
containing The Little Black Fish published by Three Continents Press (1976 &
1987) and a 1992 English translation by Hooshang Amuzegar and illustrated by
Allison Remick. The story has also been published as a folktale under the
name of Little Ebony.

The Little Black Fish is a tale within a tale, told at bedtime by
grandmother fish to her grandchildren at the bottom of the sea. It is the
story of a little black fish whose home is a stream. Grandmother tells that
the fish is an only child, the only survivor from 10,000 eggs laid by its
mother. This little fish starts to question the confines of its world and to
ask where the stream goes and where it ends. In trying to talk these matters
over with its mother the little fish involves all the neighbors in the
discussion. Everyone tells the little fish to forget about this idea of
finding the end of the stream and searching for another way to live, but
finally the little black fish leaves them all and sets out on a journey to
seek knowledge of the world.

At the bottom of the waterfall the little black fish finds a pond full of
tadpoles who are very proud and think they are the noblest and prettiest
creatures in existence. The little black fish asks to meet their mother and
when the mother frog appears she complains about her children being led
astray by the little black fish's talk and attacks it, saying that the world
is this pond and nothing more. The little black fish darts away and carries
on down the stream. The little fish meets a crab and then a lizard, who
tells it about the dangers of the pelican, the swordfish and the heron and
gives the little fish a dagger to use to escape in case it is ever caught in
the pelican's pouch. The lizard also tells about the band of fish who fight
back when the fisherman tries to catch them in their nets by pulling the
nets to the bottom of the sea. Later in its journey the little fish meets a
deer who has been shot by a hunter, in another place comes upon turtles
napping, and so on until it meets a school of fish in the wide part of the
valley where there was a lot of water. Many tiny fish come to talk with the
little black fish and when they learn that it wants to go down the river to
find the end they warn it about the pelican. They wish the fish well but are
too afraid to accompany it. The little fish continues and that night falls
asleep under a rock. It is woken in the middle of the night by the moonlight
shining into the water. The little black fish has always wanted to speak to
the moon but its mother has never allowed it to do so. Now it is able to
greet the moon and the moon replies, telling it many interesting things and
asking the little fish if it has heard that humans were planning to fly up
and land on the moon. In the morning the little black fish wakes up to find
that a group of the tiny fish has followed after all and are waiting
overhead. They are just about to set off when the water around rises up,
everything goes dark and they realize that they have been caught in the
pelican's pouch. The tiny fish immediately begin crying and blaming the
little black fish for their misfortune. They plead with the pelican to spare
them, claiming that they are innocent and that the little black fish has led
them astray. The pelican says he will pardon them if they strangle the
little black fish. They are quite ready to do this to save themselves but
the little black fish tells them not to trust the pelican's tricks and that
to test the pelican it will just pretend to be dead. As the little black
fish has the dagger to defend itself with the tiny fish are forced to agree
and they shout to the pelican that they have strangled the little black
fish. Immediately the pelican swallows them all, but the little black fish
escapes by splitting open the wall of the pelican's pouch with the dagger
and swimming away to where the pelican cannot reach it.

The little black fish swims on to where the river flows through a level
plain. Several other rivers have joined it and the water has become so
immense that the little fish cannot see the bottom. Suddenly it is attacked
by a creature with a double-edged sword in front of its mouth. The little
black fish escapes and swims to the surface, but after a while, goes below
again in search of the bottom of the sea. It meets a huge school of fish;
thousands of them and is told 'Welcome to the Sea' and is invited to join
the school of fish. The little black fish is very happy and agrees to join
them after exploring the sea a little. The fish warn it to take care near
the surface as the heron is there and each day catches at least four or five
fish. The little black fish swims off and later comes to the surface where
the sun is shining and it basks in the sun while thinking that if it should
die now it will not matter, but that what will matter is the influence that
its life will have on the lives of others. At this moment a heron swoops
down, catches the little black fish in its beak and flies off with it to
feed to its young. The little black fish tries to save itself by talking to
the heron and saying that if it dies its body will become full of poison and
it would be better to swallow it alive. The little fish goes limp and the
heron, alarmed, calls out to it. The little fish leaps from its beak and
falls to the water, but at the same moment the heron catches it again and
swallows it immediately.

It is wet and dark inside the heron's stomach and there is no way out. The
little black fish hears the sound of crying and sees a tiny fish crouched in
a corner. It tells the tiny fish to calm down as it is going to kill the
heron by ripping open its stomach with the dagger and it will free the tiny
fish first so as not to spoil the plan. In order to achieve this the little
black fish jumps about to tickle the heron and then when it opens its mouth
to laugh the tiny fish leaps out into the water. The tiny fish waits to see
the little black fish but there is no sign of it. Then the heron falls down
and cries out and beats its wings. It splashes into the water, beats its
wings again and then stops moving. There is no sign of the little black fish
and it is never seen again. The grandmother fish finishes her story and
tells her 12,000 children and grandchildren to go to sleep, but one of them
cannot sleep because of thinking about the sea.

The story ends indeed with the death of the little black fish when it is
swallowed by the heron, but its last heroic act is to save another little
fish who has been swallowed before killing the heron and dying itself in the
process. But the end of the story is still to come. The last few lines show
that the life of the little black fish has indeed influenced others:
'Eleven thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine little fish said goodnight
and went to sleep. But try as she might, a little red fish just couldn't get
to sleep. All night long she thought about the sea .'
The fish met both friends and enemies on the long journey to the sea, who
were alternately valuable and instructive. The little fish gained a lot of
knowledge from these various encounters, of the larger world and how to
survive in it, as well as of the behavior and ideas of other creatures. When
it finally reached the sea and met other fish who had also traveled the same
dangerous route to get there, the little black fish was happy because it had
found the answer to its question about living another way in the world.
After its experiences the little black fish became philosophical, saying:

'. if someday I should be forced to face death -as I shall - it doesn't
matter. What does matter is the influence that my life or death will have on
the lives of others .'

The location of the grandmother fish and her 12,000 children and
grandchildren when she told them the story of the little black fish was at
the bottom of the sea. The home of the little black fish was in a stream
which came from a mountain and flowed through a valley. When grandmother
fish finished telling them the story one of the little fish was unable to
sleep because she could not stop thinking about the sea. But they were
already at the bottom of the sea. They were already there and so did not
have to go anywhere to search for the sea. Why was such an oversight in
logic added to the end of the story? No comment has so far come to light on
this discrepancy by any of Behrangi's reviewers.

In the version of the story called Little Ebony the little fish ignored the
advice of the minnow and was caught by the fisherman, but unlike the little
black fish, she escaped and returned to her stream. Little Ebony sometimes
got bored and dreamed of new places and exciting new fish-people at the
beginning of the story, but contented herself with swimming around near home
with her friend Bianca until the day that Goldy from Big River came and
filled her head with stories. Goldy talked about Big River and how it was so
much better than their little stream. As a result Little Ebony set off for
Big River where she was chased by a huge fish. She escaped and hid under a
rock where a minnow lived. The minnow told her that the big fish always
tried to eat the little fish and that Ebony should also watch out for the
fisherman's hook. But she did not listen to the minnow and got caught on the
fisherman's hook. Little Ebony was very scared, but luckily she was so small
that the fisherman let her go. The story ends:

'Little Ebony swam straight back to her little creek and her beautiful, safe
and happy home under Big Rock. She always listened to her mom and she never
ran away again.'
These changed elements make for a very different reading of the story. First
there was an agent, the Big River fish, Goldy, without whose influence Ebony
may never have left home. Notice that she is alone. Her friend Bianca does
not leave with her. The lessons to be learned from this version are that it
is better to follow the rules and not disturb the status quo. Once caught on
the fisherman's hook Little Ebony has no plans to escape, no ideas of how to
put the fisherman in his place. She is only 'very scared.' The way back home
is open for her, however, and finally she is to be found in the same place
as at the beginning of the story, now a model child, following her mother's
instructions. Although this version of the story should, due its
satisfactory resolution which follows the pattern of many fairy stories,
leave us feeling content, there is more of a sense of frustration than with
Behrangi's version. It seems almost watered down, its promise diminished.

This possible prototype for the Little Black Fish storyline gives a clear
comparison to Behrangi's version, showing the basic philosophical
differences arising from the revolutionary rewriting of folktales.

Commentary on Behrangi's Stories
This section will present various reviews, criticisms and commentaries on
Behrangi's children's stories from a number of sources. Other views of his
rewriting of stories in relation to history will be found in the later
section on folktales.

To continue with the theme of revolutionary rewriting of folktales and the
use of symbolism, Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak comments in a review of The Little
Black Fish and other Modern Persian Stories that such factors can make
Behrangi's work difficult to translate:
'Hidden layers of meaning and covert turns of phrase designed to fool the
government censors while at the same time convey their true meaning to an
audience who seeks political statement in the heart of any literary work,
makes his fiction all but untranslatable.'

At the same time this seems to deny children as the audience for Behrangi's
fiction as they are not renowned for seeking political statements in their
bedtime stories. However, Behrangi stated himself on numerous occasions that
he is addressing children in his stories. Could other writers be reading
meanings into them where nothing so specific is intended? The language of
his folktales appears to be quite simple and unambiguous, and at first
glance easy enough to translate but, as with any writing, it does carry
associations in its original language that are naturally lost upon
translation. Brad Hanson seems to concur with Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak's
interpretation of Behrangi's writing as containing social comments intended
for adults while allowing that his folktales were also taught to the village
children:

'To evade the censor Behrangi used the folktale form. Behrangi's fiction
consists entirely of folktales, either translated from the Azeri Turkish or
created anew. That he should have chosen this style is not at all
surprising, given his fascination with Azeri folk literature and positive
experiences in teaching folktales in the village schools. However, the
opportunities to evade the censor through allegories and metaphors surely
were not lost on Behrangi.'

Farzaneh Milani, in discussing the work of the writer Simin Daneshvar makes
the following comparison with Behrangi's work on the basis of his story Mahi
Siyah-e Kuchulu (The Little Black Fish):

'Besides abstaining from militant political stances, Simin Daneshvar has
refused to follow the popular trend, typified by M.E. Beh'azin's Dokhtar-e
Ra' iyat [The Serf's Daughter] (1951) and Samad Behrangi's Mahi Siyah-e
Kuchulu [The Little Black Fish] (1968), of portraying the triumph of
idealistic dreams over social actualities. No little black fish of hers is
sent to the sea to meet the pelican with its wide pouch, the swordfish with
its sharp jawbone, or the heron with its long beak, ultimately presaging
victory for all the fish in an ocean of danger. Hers is a world where
ruthless wolves devour idealisticjf sheep, where wolves often wear sheep's
clothing. Rhapsodies of utopian longing catering to the longings of her
readers have no value for this author. She sees no illusory romantic turning
point in revolutionary changes; instead she cherishes and explores
sustained, even though undramatic, efforts to change. "No sheep has ever
devoured a wolf," she writes, "the point is how long one can resist."'

Milani finds Behrangi's stories idealistic and utopian with idealistic
dreams triumphing over reality. However, it has been seen that his stories
also deal with the harsh facts of life. The little black fish himself dies
(or at least, is never seen or heard of again) at the end of the story while
killing his enemy the heron.

John West in his book review considers that the little black fish met its
end due to tempting fate, and that the last few lines show that courage and
the search for knowledge are their own reward:

'.. just when the journey's end is in sight, and a home can be found with a
band who defeat the fishermen by swimming together and dragging down their
nets, the fish tempts fate once too often and goes down in a last desperate
struggle.

In this way Behrangi leaves the listener unsettled, frustrating our yearning
for the happy-ever-after. But courage and the search for knowledge are their
own reward, as we see in the last few lines, when the grandmother has
finished her bed-time story: "Eleven thousand nine hundred and ninety nine
little fish .."'

Behrangi's own views shown in other writing, which will be examined later,
advocate opening children's eyes to reality, as do the prefaces he has
written to some of his stories. Sabri-Tabrizi certainly does not find
Behrangi's stories shallow or utopian as can be seen from the following
comments:

'My friendship with Samad Behranghi, Behruz Dehqani and Gholam-Hossein Sa'
edi became deeper when I learned that they were honestly and passionately
devoted to serving the masses by their pen and voicing their silent griefs
and shortcomings. At a time and in a society where all political parties are
banned, freedom of speech is outlawed and historians do not dare to write
the truth, the works of such writers and their socio-political literature
becomes very valuable. In order to understand the history, the society and
the political and economic conditions of the people in Iran (especially
since the coup of 1953) [where Mossadeq was ousted] we must read and
understand the works of writers like these...'

Ricks finds that Samad Behrangi's own life and works establish him as both
artist and revolutionary. Ricks gives two reasons for the important
influence of children's stories on both adults and children: the first their
direct and simple language and the second their greater opportunities to
evade censorship through allegories and metaphors. Hanson considers that
this led to 'the folktale, euphemistically called "children's literature,"
with its own long and rich history in Persian literature becoming one of the
most important genres in post-June 1963 Iran.' And in the afterword of the
second edition Ricks notes that, although the stories are about and for
children, they are also protests against mass poverty and ignorance:

'His short stories, five of which are translated in this collection, deal
with powerless individuals, especially children, who not only share the
poverty of their parents, but must struggle to survive physically and
mentally in a society which has long ignored their vulnerable natures. His
style and vocabulary, innovations in themselves, reflect everyday speech.
And because he did not believe that young people should be protected from
knowledge of the harsh realities of life, he told stories with real pain,
coarseness, and even cruelty. His stories, then, are about and for children:
they are also thinly coded protests against mass poverty and ignorance.'

The Little Black Fish is seen by Thomas Ricks as an allegorical tale of the
ways to achieve knowledge and consciousness of the dynamics of society. He
says that Behrangi raises basic questions in the story concerning change and
continuity in life and builds a clear understanding of society through the
experiences of others. He continues:

'The initial departure of the little black fish from his mother's home and
the resulting uproar due to the fish's desire "to see the end of the stream"
is a very important lesson in education and politics. The more the fish was
pressed by his mother and neighbors to stay, the clearer the issues became.
When questioned as to how the fish learned about there being "another world"
and "an end to the stream", anyway, the fish replied that he learned about
these matters on his own and from listening to others. After enduring the
constant complaints of the old fishes, the little black fish wanted to know
"is there another way to live in the world?"; a question the little fish
could not answer until he had traveled and experienced other worlds.'
Behrangi's introduction to Oolduz and the Talking Doll confirms his audience
as working class children and criticizes rich spoilt children heavily when
the doll says:

'.every pampered and selfish child has no right to read Oolduz and my story,
particularly the wealthy children who ride in big cars, look cocky, and
think they're heads taller than the vagabond and raggedy children in the
street, never passing through the working-class districts. Mr. Behrangi
himself said he writes principally for the vagabond, raggedy working-class
children. Of course, misguided and self-indulgent children can read Mr.
Behrangi's stories but only after correcting their thoughts and actions'

In his stories Behrangi effectively highlights the gulf between the rich
few, who enjoyed the financial and moral support of the Shah and his
government, and the poor majority. He also stresses the gulf between theory
and practice, the moral teachings and deeds, of the government. Brad Hanson
describes Behrangi's work as follows:

'Behrangi's corpus of fiction - short stories often referred to as children'
s stories in the West, but really timeless folktales meant for child and
adult alike - is deeply rooted in his village teaching experiences and his
love for Azeri folk culture. Behrangi left no doubt that he wrote these
tales to instruct and to incite.'

This can be seen in the story of Oolduz and the Crows where the crow tells
Oolduz how it steals soup from courtyards or catches fish from pools. Oolduz
and the Crows (Oolduz is a popular name for girls in Azerbaijan) criticizes
social injustice and abstract moral laws. It was written after Behrangi's
first story, Taragon (1964), which had its background in Azeri myths and
proclaimed him as an able and progressive writer. Behrangi, in his travels,
had observed the uneven distribution of wealth in the villages and in the
cities of Azerbaijan, which is a comparatively prosperous province of Iran.

Oolduz asks why the crow steals, disapprovingly adding that it is a sin. The
crow accuses her of being childish and asks, "What is sin? When my children
and I are dying of hunger it is a sin not to steal." He considers not
fighting for survival to be a sin and to be unable to satisfy his hunger and
that of his children to be a sin, especially when he can see that others
have plenty. He tells Oolduz that her theoretical moralizing and empty
advice can never prevent stealing, adding, 'For as long as everyone seeks
only his own interest, there will be stealing.' This theme echoes the one in
the story The Bald Pigeonkeeper [Kachal Kaftarbaz]. Behrangi perceives the
issue of morality as being in its true oppressive position when seen in the
reality of life for the majority of people in the world.

In the introduction to the second edition of his collection of children's
stories we find that despite being a writer of 'children's literature' he
was highly regarded by other intellectuals and artists in Iran:

'Despite a short literary career, Behrangi's output was voluminous. At the
time of his death he was already recognized as one of the most important
writers of contemporary Iran. The memorial essay by Gholam Hossein Sa'edi
attests to the extraordinary influence and respected status Behrangi had
attained among Iranian artists and intellectuals, even though his most
popular works belong to the genre of children's literature. Behrangi's
reputation is based primarily on his short stories which, although written
originally for a youthful audience, contain social themes and philosophy of
ageless appeal.'

Although Behrangi's work covers issues ranging from education to various
literary and social topics, it is his children's stories that made him most
famous and brought the wrath of the powers to be upon him. His stories,
while quite popular among children, are widely enjoyed by adult readers, as
well. They are seen to have a special relevance to children:

'The stories are more directed towards the children who 'glamour and money'
had not yet seduced and their ears and eyes weren't filled with colors and
songs.'

Behrangi's stories demonstrate his concern with social class barriers and
the ignorance of different groups of people in the society about others,
especially the stereotyped city/country divide. He tried to act as a bond
between the two groups and encouraged them to learn more about each other.
He believed that before any action could be taken to improve people's lives
there had to be knowledge about the situation. Behrangi did not intend his
stories to be mere entertainment but a reflection of reality with good
battling against evil.

In his review of Behrangi's work, John West in the Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs introduces The Bald Pigeon Keeper as follows:

'The Bald Pigeon Keeper uses a traditional Eastern folktale formula but
contains none of the escapism associated with that genre. The poor man who
marries the princess is not handsome but bald. He does not set out to win
his beloved but is pursued by her. His magical powers he uses first to
steal, unconcerned for an individual happy ever-after ending. He succeeds by
a courage which includes fearlessness in the face of the king and his army.
The narrative, while containing these unusual elements, follows a smooth
fairy-tale track - a subtle subversion.'

The story appears to follow a conventional plot, but with some quite
extraordinary features. This has led to a number of interpretations. One
suggestion asserts that Behrangi had projected the idea in this story that
the Shah's regime suffered from two weaknesses; one the lack of a proper
educational and political mechanism and freedom, and the other social
injustice, especially in the case of the honest and hard-working villagers.
Certainly a similar theme can be seen here to the one in Oolduz and the
Crows where the justification for stealing is that it is one's duty to fight
for survival in the face of unjust conditions.

Behrangi's stories show the forces of good battling against evil. He did not
intend them to be mere entertainment as can be seen from his preface to The
Bald Pigeon Keeper which begins:
'A few words:
Children, the future is in your hands and its good and evil belong to you.
Whether you want to or not, you are growing up as time passes. You come
after your fathers and elders and will take their places and inherit
everything. You will be master of society. Poverty, oppression, power,
justice, joy and sorrow, loneliness, punishment, work and idleness, prison
and freedom, sickness and hunger and need, and a hundred strengths and
weaknesses of society will belong to you.Poverty, oppression, lies,
stealing, and war are illnesses seen only in an unhealthy society.'

This preface addresses children as the audience for the story. It lists the
ills of society and makes children realize that they will be the ones who
are responsible in the future. Behrangi continues by telling children to
always ask themselves why, giving a number of examples: Why does my friend
have to work in a carpet-weaving workshop? Why do people steal things? Why
do countries fight wars? Where did we come from and what will happen to us
when we die? What will happen to the world? When will war, poverty and
hunger ever end? He says children must ask a thousand other questions in
order to understand society and work to improve it in every possible way in
order to pass something better on to their own children; one must induce
change in one's society, better that which is good and stamp out that which
is not. He makes a comparison between the health of a body and that of a
nation. All classes of society should count and visiting other villages and
cities, mixing with different kinds of people and reading informative and
thought provoking books, are advocated as a means towards understanding and
improvement. Behrangi ends his 'few words' by saying that worthwhile stories
can teach perceptive children about people, society and life, and that they
need not be only for entertainment.

In discussing Kachal Koftarbaz, Sabri-Tabrizi says that although Behrangi's
story may seem rather simple and childish, his vision is sharp and that the
story, despite being for children, was also meant to be read and understood
by adults. He asserts that it was written in this style in order to avoid
the attention of SAVAK, who would otherwise have prohibited its publication
and that SAVAK came to fully understand the meaning of Samad's works soon
after his death, because of the influence he left behind among the people.
Sabri-Tabrizi also considers the pigeons who rose from the dead to have
special symbolism as can be seen from these comments of his on the story:

' "Sister, if Kachal feeds his goat on the leaves of the mulberry tree, and
then milks his goat and rubs the milk on the necks of his dead pigeons, then
the pigeons will wake up from their death sleep and do things that ordinary
pigeons cannot do." This refers to those who were arrested or tortured by
the SAVAK. After their release they knew things about the SAVAK that other
people did not. They knew the SAVAK from the inside.'

Such interpretations are contentious as these stories are acknowledged to
have been derived from folktales told long before SAVAK came into existence.
The wider historical background of Behrangi's stories and their relation to
folktales will be further examined in a later section.

The Little Black Fish is said to be the most important of Behrangi's works
because its philosophy contains all of his essential ideas about society:
that one should continually question one's environment, oppose injustices,
struggle against tyranny, and work actively to change the ills of society.
These ideas mark a sharp break with the themes typically found in earlier
twentieth century Iranian literature. Compared to writers such as Hedayat,
Behrangi shows an optimistic approach, believing that society can be
improved by individual action. This may also reflect his youthful outlook,
not having had time in his short life to become disillusioned and resigned
to the status quo.

It has been seen from the commentary in secondary sources that most critics
comment only on Behrangi's stories and that their opinions are mainly based
on this one aspect of his work. However, all the various facets of Behrangi'
s work need to be explored in order to fully appreciate his legacy,
including his stories, his translations of other Iranian writers, his
struggle to forward the Azerbaijani national cause, his efforts to
perpetuate and advance the Azeri language, his essays on education, social
conditions and children's literature, and his work on the folklore of
Azerbaijan. In his essays, Behrangi shows his aversion to American influence
in Iran, offering solutions on a modest and practical scale rather than on a
revolutionary one, at least in connection with education. This is a subject
of which Behrangi had much practical experience and was able to write about
in great detail. He was also very explicit in his ideas on the purpose of
children's literature, and in his criticism of other children's writers
whose ideology he disagreed with, as will be seen in the next section. In
many of his short stories the class struggle is highlighted and the morals
of the stories are clearly shown; that the underprivileged workers must rise
up against the tyranny and injustice of those in power, after carefully
making plans based on knowledge gained from personal experience.

Thus, in order to fully understand Behrangi's philosophy and message, and to
appreciate the different aspects of his legacy, it is necessary to read both
his fiction and his essays.

Behrangi's Essays

Behrangi wrote a number of non-fiction works which were highly respected by
his contempories and which found their place in the literature of resistance
leading up to the Islamic Revolution. These are an essential part of the
corpus of his work. In turning to Behrangi's concerns and comments in his
essays, Al-e Ahmad's nickname for him, 'Dagh-e Samad' ('Hot-headed Samad'),
will be found very apt. In these works he criticized the Iranian bourgeoisie
and the westernization of Iran openly and strongly. Unlike Jalal Al-e Ahmad,
who completed an entire work of disparaging rhetoric on the above topics by
way of an overall cultural analysis, Behrangi did not dedicate a particular
piece of work to these subjects, but rather dwelt upon the issues on various
occasions in his essays from a more class-oriented and leftist perspective.

Behrangi found that Western educational theories could not be put into
practice under the conditions found in Iranian village schools. Thus in one
of the chapters of his book, An Investigation into the Educational Problems
of Iran, he wrote, 'Until we see an environment or society closely, until we
live in it, mix with the people and hear their griefs and learn about their
wants, it is vain and useless to show ourselves sympathetic to that society
and people, and even to write stories for them.' He considered it impossible
for a person living comfortably in Europe or Tehran while writing books
about the education of poor villagers, to be objective or aware of the
difficulties resulting from the living conditions of those villagers.
Bashiri observes that:

'He criticized both the methodology and the contents of the state-sponsored
textbooks. He found the methodology to be outdated and the materials
inappropriate. "Postal service, congratulatory notes, telephone
conversation, and sitting at the table, although commonplace concepts in a
western society, are alien to Iranian village children," he said. Rather
than spending precious time explaining these concepts, he normally took the
pen and replaced words and phrases that were inappropriate for village
children.'

Several of Behrangi's essays were gathered together and published by Behruz
Dehqani in the summer of 1969 under the title Majmu'ah-e Maqalah-ha (A
Collection of Articles). In one of his essays, Literature for Children,
Behrangi strongly criticized passive and conventional moral and social laws,
especially as applied to children:

'That time is past when we limited children's literature to propaganda and
indoctrination; dogmatic advice on things such as personal hygiene,
obedience to parents, listening to adults, not making noise in front of
guests, being an early riser, in order to be successful; smile and the world
smiles with you: helping the poor in the style of Charity Institutions, and
many other examples like these, the total sum of which contributes to
keeping children ignorant of the major issues and crucial problems of life
and their living environment. Why should we smother the child in an
unfounded cocoon of hope and happiness and joy while his elder brother is
craving for one free breath, one breath of fresh air? The child should be
disillusioned with baseless and unrealistic expectations but rather be given
another type of hope based on knowledge of the realities of life and society
and so replace the false hopes with a struggle to achieve these
expectations.

Is there nothing else necessary for children to learn other than cleanliness
and obedience to elders and listening to teachers (which teachers?) and
politeness and ethics (which ethics?); that the powerful, rich and opulent
support and propagate?

Should we not tell our children that there are children in this country who
have not seen the color of meat or even cheese from one month to the next or
even from one year to the next? Because there are a few people who always
desire to have "goose cooked in wine" on their dinner table!.Should we not
tell our children that more than half of the world's population is hungry;
and why they are kept hungry; and what ways we can fight to alleviate their
hunger? Should we not teach our children a scientific and correct concept of
the history, development and evolution of human societies? Why must we bring
up children to be prim and proper, obedient and silent? Do we intend to put
children behind the shop windows of luxury haberdashers stores at the top
end of town and turn them into elegant dummies?'

He asks why we say falsehood and theft is bad and why we say obedience to
parents is admirable, thinking it better that children should be shown the
reasons for falsehood and theft being facts of life and common practice
everywhere. Children are taught that they should be honest while at the same
time the right eye lies to the left eye and brother mistrusts brother. If
one were to directly speak that which was in one's heart possibly a release
could be found from some of these problems.

Is it admirable to obey unfit and pleasure-loving teachers and mothers and
fathers whose only aim is to live comfortably and pass their time as much as
possible without problems or inconveniences and to amass as much money as
possible?

Why do we advocate charity for the poor but we never say how this person has
become 'poor' and that one 'wealthy'; one who puffs out his chest and
imparts a worthless dread of his wealth to that poor old man and puts him
under an indebtedness that 'yes, I am a good and righteous man and I always
give aid to poor and unlucky people like you, and of course this is for the
sake of God's blessing - otherwise you are not important enough to be a
recipient of my kindness.'

He goes on to say that attention should be given to two major issues which
lie at the heart of children's literature:

1) Children's literature must be a bridge between the colorful, blissfully
ignorant and innocent world of children, their dreams and sweet
imaginations, and the dark world of the adult whose consciousness is drowned
in bitter and painful truth and in the hard social environment. The child
must cross this bridge and venture into the dark world of adults with
awareness and armed with light in hand. It is in this way that a child can
be a help and a real friend to his father in life and a positive force for
improvement in the sluggish and ever-sinking society.

A child should know by what suffering his father earns a crust of bread and
how his elder brother is oppressed and completely stifled. This child should
also know what way he must help his father in these dark days, this winter
made by the hand of man. Children must be discouraged from having 'unfounded
false hopes'. Children must know that their fathers too are drowning hand
and foot in the mire of society and, contrary to what all children wrongly
think, the powers of their fathers, in truth, are confined to violence
against their wives.

2) We should provide accurate and scientific information about the world to
our children. We should give them values which enable them to deal with and
evaluate the various moral and social problems in the ever-changing
conditions and circumstances of society. We know that moral values are not
constant; what was good a year ago may be bad two years later. An action
which is considered moral in one society or community may be deemed immoral
amongst other groups or classes. In a family where the father spends all his
earnings on gambling and frolicking and has no positive impact on society,
he is a barrier to social evolution. The child is not obliged to be
obedient, truthful and silent. He does not have to accept his father's
views.

Behrangi strongly criticizes Abbas Yamini-Sharif's poetry for children,
saying that it has no message for children, other than 'a great deal of
amusement by way of excess verbosity and play on words and a great number of
possibly antiquated moral codes.' For example, in some places Yamini-Sharif
mentions that people should be kind but Behrangi asks to whom should we be
kind? Is it possible to be kind to the person on whose orders bombs are
dropped on people? Is it possible to be kind to Hitler's henchmen, who
massacred innocent people? Yamini-Sharif decrees that hurting other people
is bad. Behrangi asks, 'Shall we not hurt those whose aim is hurting and
spilling the blood of other people? Does he (Yamini-Sharif) mean that you
should keep your head down like a sheep and follow the footsteps of other
sheep and chew dirt and produce milk and nothing else?'

In other words children's literature should not only propagate love and
kindness to humanity, and frugality and humility, it should also tell the
child to detest whatever and whoever is inhuman and an enemy of humanity.
Fine sentiments about obedience and love for humanity from those who have
the largest slice of the cake are to be expected, but for those who have
only crumbs, these words are valueless. Behrangi castigates Yamini-Sharif
thoroughly as a result of this philosophy:

'The description of a bad child and monster that Mr. Yamini-Sharif gives,
matches exactly the description of millions of poor children who are working
in workshops and carpet-weaving factories, and vagrants in our society. Mr.
Yamini-Sharif imagines that all the children in Iran and even in the world
are like those children surrounding him, who have beautifully combed hair
and whose trousers are well-creased, who never swear in public, never shout,
and do not play on rubbish-tips. These children are not roaming the streets
and restaurants from dawn to dusk selling lottery tickets, coat hangers,
plastic coat-covers, ice-water and so on. They are not weaving carpets in
damp, dingy cellars. All those children, who from dawn to dusk are forged in
the kiln of life's bitter experiences, in Mr. Yamini-Sharif's view, are bad
children; but the few children whose only virtues are keeping themselves
tidy, eating with proper manners, showing obedience to their parents, not
swearing or shouting, are good and exemplary.'

Thus, it can be seen that Behrangi opposed cotton wool fantasies and
moralistic clichés for children, and had very strong views on what should be
portrayed in children's literature and the purpose it should serve. He
favored a realistic approach while at the same time always striving for
justice. Behrangi's work reflects a number of political and historic
influences. In the next section the inspiration given by his homeland's
folklore will be examined.

The Legacy of Folktales

As previously mentioned, Samad Behrangi had collected Azerbaijani folktales
and translated them into Persian. His fiction was strongly influenced by his
country's traditions and folklore, and in his philosophy of life he drew
from the wisdom of the past as well as the reality of the present.

The stories of Samad Behrangi are seen as reflections of conditions and
reactions to an unjust society; a way of giving voice to the grief of the
ordinary people. Behrangi takes traditional folktales and in some cases
rewrites them to reflect modern times and revolutionary ideas. They follow
the tradition of folktales presenting the stark realities of power politics
and the violence and brutality of everyday life, as well as projecting
magical possibilities of becoming rich, gaining power and achieving one's
dreams. So, while being utopian on the one hand, they also present a
realistic picture of life on the other. Boroujerdi acknowledges the
importance of folk style and symbolism in Behrangi's stories:

'The significance of Behrangi's stories stems not so much from their
aesthetic nature (they followed straightforward plots and employed a simple
language) but lies in the folk style and rich symbolism with which they were
narrated. Behrangi represented the best of what can be regarded as populist
and partisan literature.'

Karimi-Hakkak mentions the retelling by Behrangi of the adventures of
Koroglu, a Robin Hood style hero of Turkish folk songs and oral tales, who
was depicted as a proletarian hero fighting to eradicate social ills and
human exploitation. Behrangi wrote in his introduction to The Epic of
Koroglu:

'Koroglu's power is the power of the masses; that endless power which is the
source of all power. Koroglu's greatest virtue is his trust in this power.He
does not forget, even for one moment, who he is, for whom he is fighting,
and what the object of his struggle is. He is always mindful of his people
whose backs are bent in slave labor beneath the pressure of the Khans and
the ruling class.'

In looking closely at the origins of this particular folktale certain histor
ical facts seem to refute the Robin Hood image of Koroglu. Vagif Samadoglu,
commenting from a psychological perspective, believes that heroic epics and
legends within a society are created out of anxiety, such as fear of death
or vulnerability. When people are afraid, they create heroes to save
themselves from disaster. In his opinion, legends and epics are expressions
of this desperate plea for help. By believing in legends that they
themselves have created, people are able to alleviate some of these fears.

He cites the example of Koroglu: 'The legend of Koroglu emphasizes the
spirit of heroism - the heroism of one person who stood up against the
rulers of his time. Like Robin Hood, Koroglu was a 'gachag,' a person who
fought against the wealthy landowners and khans.' Almost every region of
Azerbaijan, during the 19th century, had its gachags and many stories and
epics were created about them, praising their heroic deeds and bravery.
Samadoglu notes that perhaps as many as 70 percent of these very gachags
were working for the Russian Empire in its attempt to overthrow the
landowners and rulers in the region. The poor were not their main concern.
Quite possibly the praise songs and stories were created in an attempt to
placate these 'heroes' until people started to believe that they were true.
Samadoglu comments as follows on this phenomenon: 'In my opinion, the
greatest tragedy related to our legends is when a lie is accepted as truth
through misinterpretation.'

In a way Samadoglu is accusing writers like Behrangi for taking these
legends at their face value. He gives further examples of how such stories
and legends have been changed, misused or misrepresented to serve idealistic
political or moralistic viewpoints:

'When it comes to legends, sometimes our suspension of disbelief goes too
far, and we are led to believe the absurd. For instance, the epic says that
Koroglu only robbed the wealthy, and didn't touch the poor. But why would he
have bothered with the poor? What did the poor have? Koroglu didn't steal
from the poor simply because they had nothing to steal.
When we grew up in the Soviet period and read legends and epics at school,
most of them were in a manipulated version. How do we know? For example,
there is a scene in Koroglu in which a gardener tells Koroglu to come to the
garden because his wife Nigar will be there. Koroglu asks: "What time should
I come?" Those who interfered with the story weren't careful about small
details and nuances and forgot that during the period when Koroglu lived
several centuries earlier, watches and clocks had not yet been invented.'

Thus the interpretation of the origins and meanings of folktales can be seen
as a somewhat contentious area. Often the message of a story is not explicit
but intentionally placed beneath layers of symbolism and imagery. This can
be seen by the different levels that can be read into any story and the
numerous meanings that can be extracted according to one's age and
perspective.

If folktales and fairy stories are closely examined it will be found that
while encouraging the imagination of children they also contain strong
didactic messages about how to deal with the world. This is important since
much modern writing for children worldwide has its roots in such tales, even
though the tales themselves were not originally told only to children but to
a mixed audience. Jack Zipes observes that the concerns of European society
in the pre-industrialized fifteenth to seventeenth centuries were what
shaped European folktales. He also notes the influence of stories from other
cultures:

'Not only did bourgeois and aristocratic writers explore and exploit the
treasures of French folklore, but they also borrowed from the Italian
literary tradition. and they began to translate oriental fairy tales which
had a tremendous influence. In 1704 Galland published part of the Arabian
Nights and in 1707 Petit de Lacroix edited a collection of Persian fairy
tales under the title A Thousand and One Days.

The stories reflected monarchistic, patriarchal and feudal societies with
the focus on class struggle and competition for power with the central theme
of 'might makes right.' Despite the introduction of many changes when the
tales were written down and subsequently rewritten many of them retain key
elements found in the oral versions. Zipes agrees with Tenèze in identifying
power and oppression as the key themes of folktales:

'This is why the people, largely peasants, were predominantly attracted to
the tale and became its prime carriers; the oral folktales were those
symbolic acts in which they enunciated their aspirations and projected the
magic possibility in an assortment of imaginative ways so that anyone could
become a knight in shining armor or a lovely princess. They also presented
the stark realities of power politics without disguising the violence and
brutality of everyday life. Starvation of children, rape, corporeal
punishment, ruthless exploitation - these are some of the conditions which
are at the root of the folktale, conditions which were so overwhelming that
they demanded symbolic abstraction.'

These are the folktales which have been used as a basis for modern children'
s stories. By using symbolic abstraction it may be possible to read them on
two different levels, thus presenting a children's reading and an adults'
reading of the same story.

The magical possibilities and mystic elements perform a practical function
in stories, according to Zipes and others. The magic and miraculous
represent metaphorically the conscious and unconscious desires of the lower
classes to seize power. In the process power takes on a moral quality. The
fact that the people as carriers of the tales do not openly seek total
revolution does not minimize the utopian aspect of their portrayal of class
conflict. Zipes notes:
'Whatever the outcomes of the tales are - and for the most part they are
happy ends and 'exemplary' in that they affirm a more just feudal order with
democratizing elements - the impulse and critique of the 'magic' are rooted
in an historically explicable desire to overcome oppression and change
society.'

In the case of Persian children's literature, as with any country's
literature, the effects of history, tradition, politics, religion and morals
play an important part in shaping what is written and what is considered
suitable for children. The tradition of folklore and folktales has created a
strong foundation for the many modern children's tales found today in Iran.
The Persian national epic, the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi (completed in 1010 AD)
has a wealth of mythical, heroic and historical elements. This classic took
Ferdowsi over thirty years to finish and has had a lasting impact upon the
Iranian imagination. Azin Mostajet Haghighi identifies fate, revenge and
also justice as main themes which are significantly represented in this and
other epics. In her book entitled Persian Fairy Tales Eleanor Brockett tells
of the sad ending of the hero Jamsheed whose downfall was caused by pride.
It led to his losing everything including his kingdom and his princess when
he was captured and tortured to death by the evil Zohak. This is a story
from the Shahnameh.

The question arises; what is myth and what is fairytale, or epic or
folktale? Despite being given separate definitions, in reality, the limits
are often unclear, with stories moving from one category to another. Parts
of stories are removed from their context and retold, rewritten, modernized,
fantasized, translated, adapted and given many other treatments. The story
of Rostam, the legendary hero of the Shahnameh, has been rewritten into a
twentieth century children's fantasy story where Rostam and his demon steed
Rakhsh race with Jankas, the modern hero, who rides a motorbike. The
enduring nature of the effect of folktales and their modern application as
children's tales can be clearly seen in the continuing popularity of the
themes and characters of old, and their numerous adaptations.

Thus any modern children's writer in following conventions set by folktales
may well unwittingly echo these concerns in their stories. On the other
hand, a writer who wished to examine such issues without attracting the
wrath of a powerful regime which inflicted wrongs upon the weaker classes of
society could shelter under the umbrella of metaphorical representation and
symbolic abstraction in children's stories as has been noted in the case of
Samad Behrangi.

Samad Behrangi's Homeland: Azerbaijan

In order to better understand the influences underlying Behrangi's
philosophy leading to his contribution as a social and political commentator
it is useful to know something of the historical background of Azerbaijan,
the region of Iran which was his home. It will be seen that he comes from a
background of struggle to achieve a voice, of alternating powers seeking to
influence the politics of the region and of writers and poets who have
developed a kind of literature using allegory and metaphor to describe their
yearning for a united homeland with its own culture and language.

Azeri national movements in Iran throughout the twentieth century were
supported by the North - not only from the Azeris living north of the
Iranian border, but especially from the Soviet Union. They were also
cultural and traditional movements: over the years they developed their own
school of literature, the 'literature of longing,' and this literature
developed its own symbolism. The struggle in Azerbaijan has left a number of
victims and martyrs, of which Samad Behrangi is considered to be one. The
Azeri popular song, 'Semed, Semed!' is dedicated to Behrangi. Another victim
was Pishevari, president of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, established
under Soviet protection in 1945. He perished in 1947 in a strange case of
'accidental' death in Northern Azerbaijan, the circumstances of which are
still unexplained. The Soviet authorities officially reported his death as
the result of a car accident.

The origin of the Southern Azerbaijani National Liberation Movement can be
found when Azerbaijan was divided up between Russia and Iran by the1828
Treaty of Turkmanchay. It was during the World War II occupation of northern
Iran by the USSR that the real beginning of the modern nationalist movement
took place. During this time many Soviet Azeris were present, performing
various social functions including the establishment of newspapers,
magazines, cultural contacts, and the training of Southern Azeri
journalists, writers and political activists in their own language and
culture. This must have been liberating for the Southern Azeris as the
teaching of the Azerbaijani language had been banned under Reza Shah during
the period between the early 1920s and 1941. As a child Samad Behrangi was
able to see publications in Azerbaijani, something that was denied to him as
an adult writer. For a brief period during his formative years he was able
to freely encounter the teaching of his own language, to see it on the front
of newspapers and publications in shops, and to feel a strong pride in his
own ability to speak Azerbaijani. This atmosphere must have strengthened him
immensely in the struggle he later undertook to perpetuate his language. On
1st November 1941 the Azerbaijan Society published its first issue of the
newspaper, Azerbaijan, which was the first newspaper written in Azerbaijani
for twenty years. The next year the Tabriz anti-Axis, pro-Allied Forces
'anti-fascist' committee published Yumuruq and Vatan Yolunda (Towards the
Homeland) was published by the Soviet Department of Propaganda.

Mirza Ibrahimov, who was an influential figure for the Southern Azeris in
the post-war years, wrote in 1983 that Vatan Yolunda shone like a light in
the darkness for the Southern Azeris, for whom schools, the press, and
literature in the mother tongue had been banned, and who had suffered
oppression and persecution through the denial of their identity,
nationality, history, culture, and language under the tyranny of the Shah
for two decades.

After the departure of the Red Army the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic,
which had been established in Iranian Azerbaijan under Soviet protection in
1945, collapsed. This resulted, before Behrangi had reached the age of 10,
in the flight of many southern Azeri political leaders, poets and writers to
Soviet Azerbaijan. They were received warmly by the literary community and
gradually they integrated into Soviet Azeri society, with many of them
continuing to work for the liberation of Southern Azerbaijan.

Despite the physical removal of all these writers from the Iranian
Azerbaijani scene, their works were known throughout the whole of
Azerbaijan. These patriotic and nationalistic works inspired many young
Azerbaijanis of the time, including Behrangi. Mirza Ibrahimov's novel The
Coming Day, published in Baku in the late 1940s, dealt with the Southern
Azeri national liberation struggle. This novel was revised and translated
into Russian, and received the Lenin Prize, thus creating a much wider
audience for the 'Southern Question.' Suleyman Rustam also won a Soviet
state prize in 1947 for poetry reflecting his experiences in Tabriz during
the Soviet occupation. The Moscow journal Ogonyok voted his 'Winter in
Tabriz' one of the best poems of 1949. During this same period Jafer Khendan
set down guidelines for the symbols of 'longing' for Southern Azerbaijan and
the history of the entire Southern movement in his 1949 doctoral
dissertation 'The Ideas of the National Liberation Movement in Southern
Azerbaijan,' guidelines that are still followed by poets and critics today.
Although allegorical symbols are used, any reader can still read its poetry
without losing any meaning: for example a verse from Kamran Mehdi's 1983
poem 'Longing' is understandable by all:

'The Araz, nurturing us with sorrow,
Flows on, cutting like lightning.
True, the Araz divides a nation,
But... the earth underneath is one!'

The Azeri nationalist movement was linked to communism through the support
of its northern, Soviet half. However, most southern Azeris gradually found
the ideals of Marxism-Leninism unacceptable and this reduced Soviet
influence in the political sphere. The emphasis of Southern ideologists
centered more on developing the sense of an Azerbaijani nationality,
distinct from that of other nationalities within Iran, through promoting the
development of the Azeri Turkish language. It has been seen that Behrangi
was a leading advocate of this policy. This emphasis also resulted in the
Azeri sense of nationality being enhanced within Soviet Azerbaijan. The aim
was to achieve a sense of common Azeri identity which superseded the Iranian
or Soviet identity among the Azeris whether one lived north or south of the
Araz River. Such was the background which formed and nurtured Behrangi's
ideology. These were the forces which shaped him into the powerfully
idealist writer that he was to become. Behrangi's interest in stories and
folktales, as part of Azeri culture, and Azeri politics, were kindled as he
was growing up. When he later traveled around Iran as a teacher he saw the
widespread unequal distribution of wealth and wrote his essays and stories
to reach an increasingly universal audience.

Summary & Conclusion

The paper began with a short biography of Samad Behrangi. It then examined
five of his children's stories published in the two-year period 1967 to
1968, with a section of commentary, followed by an analysis of some of his
non-fiction writing, comprising his work on children's literature and
education in Iran, and a discussion of the influence of folktales.

The following historical section showing the events in Azerbaijan which
affected Behrangi as a child was intended to give an insight into his
motivation and ideology. It was found that in secondary literature his
critics mainly looked at his fiction. This does not give a true overall
picture and it is necessary to take other aspects into account. By looking
at Samad Behrangi's life and work, examining some of his short stories in
detail and some of his non-fiction, especially his writing on children's
literature, it can be appreciated that it is impossible to understand the
career and contributions of this writer without taking into account aspects
of all these elements.

Elements of folktales have been examined and also their effect and influence
on modern tales and modern writers. In Iran the folktale has formed the
basis for a number of modern children's stories. The life and work of Samad
Behrangi has been used to illustrate this connection and his educational and
political philosophy has been analyzed with reference to both his fiction
and his additional works in essay form. Behrangi's own views on the purpose
of children's literature have been examined, especially as revealed in his
essays. Although his stories may sometimes have a tendency towards promoting
idealistic dreams over social actualities, they do not always contain an
illusory romantic turning point resulting in revolutionary changes. The
social and political conditions of Behrangi's time have been examined,
especially with regard to the ensuing censorship. The paper ends with a
historical overview of Azerbaijan, intended to illuminate the historical
background of Behrangi's reality and the forces which informed his writing
and led to the formation of his ideas.

Behrangi's views were strongly influenced by the history of his land and the
political events surrounding him as a child. He nevertheless had the gift of
seeing elemental truths and recognizing essential issues which affect all
parts of the world. His writing raises questions that educators and children
's writers in many countries argue about to this day. In addition to
questions concerning the definitions of different kinds of stories, and
whether they were really meant for children at all, there is the ongoing
debate about what children should be exposed to in the way of stories,
reading and literature. To return to the wider perspective, should children'
s literature encourage children's imagination and protect them from the evil
realities of the world or should it open their eyes and train them in
methods of dealing with such eventualities? As we become adults how are we
affected by what we have read as children and what do we retain from our
reading? Such memories and opinions are highly personal and are bound to
differ widely from person to person. Farzaneh Milani says the following
about the effects of children's stories:

'We surrendered our childhood to their titillating accounts of adventure and
romance, blending the real and the fantastic. Their captivating stories
could cast a spell to prevent ruthless kings, monsters, and intruders from
executing evil designs. We basked in their fancy and trusted their mystic
and dreamlike qualities that opened vistas of beauty, adventure, and
splendor in our bewildered minds. Our childhood was impregnated with and
transformed by these tales, which like those told by Shahrezad to tame the
enraged and violent king, consoled, distracted, delighted, and engaged the
imagination.'

The role of children's literature in the socialization of children is
accepted by educators. Leslie Kant notes the importance of early reading on
attitudes and behavior in her foreword for a Schools Council publication:

A Language for Life, the report of the Bullock Committee, a UK Education
Department committee, states 'It is never too soon to start thinking about
the ways in which attitudes may be influenced by reading'. Most teachers
would argue, it says, that apart from the acquisition of language, the major
role of fiction is to encourage children to explore relationships and to
develop sensitivity in their understanding of their own behavior and that of
others, and the images that children encounter when reading are a powerful
means of shaping such thinking and behavior. If, as the Bullock Committee
states above, fiction has a major role in encouraging children to explore
relationships and to develop sensitivity in their understanding of their own
behavior and that of others, then children's stories based on folktales do
much more than 'open vistas of beauty, adventure, and splendor in the
bewildered minds of children with their mystic and dreamlike qualities.'

Several differing points of view on the interpretation of children's writing
have been examined in this paper, from the somewhat cynical observations of
Samadoglu to the delightful 'basking in the fancy of and having our
childhood transformed by children's stories' of Milani. From an educational
point of view, the Bullock Committee considers that the major role of
fiction is to encourage children to explore relationships and develop
sensitivity in their understanding of their own behavior. It has been seen
that the very tenacity of those children's stories arising from folktales
has given them the power to affect the views of entire generations.

Samad Behrangi is one Iranian writer who became famous due to his children's
books. The fact that they were translated into English made them available
to a much wider audience than just that of the Persian-speaking community.
There are many other writers of children's stories in Iran as well as a
number of organizations dedicated to the production of material for
children. The advent of the Islamic Revolution has changed the parameters
drastically for both writers and organizations. Permissible topics have
changed, the purpose of children's literature has been redefined, politics
within Iran have changed and the outside world and times have also moved on.
How much has really changed in an underlying economic and cultural sense
remains to be seen.

Subsequent research will seek to explore these topics further and to show
the important position of children's literature in influencing and
maintaining a society's cultural norms.

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