Selections From Reading Lolita In Tehran By Karen Ho: An Analysis

Nowadays, education becomes one of the most important ways for people to improve and realize their dreams. It not only empowers elite students to work harder, but also frees women from discrimination. However, Ho explained how elite education system blinded students’ eyes on what constitutes a good job. In the essay “Biographies of Hegemony”, Karen Ho mentioned that Wall Street companies hire the majority of their employees from elite universities, especially Harvard and Princeton. The culture and tradition of working on Wall Street after graduation exert high pressure on students at these elite universities, and limits their career options and expectations. On the contrary, in the essay “Selections From Reading Lolita in Tehran”, Azar Nafisi

From her opinion, education provide women with a space to image how their future will look like. Both essays illustrates about how education influences individuals' lives. Certain ideas rule education to become the tool of cultural and ideological hegemony, but individuals use literature to release themselves from these hegemonies. The fixed and perpetual ideas and behaviors in the universities lead education to become a powerful tool of cultural and ideological hegemony. When people stay in a specific environment that constantly influenced by a single idea, they will be influenced unconsciously. As Ho says, “they’re here. I can see them. I can smell them. They’re in my inbox. They’re in my mailbox. They’re on my voicemail. They’re outside my door. They’re on campus, and they smell blood…They’re the investment banks”(171). Every year, the Wall Street will go to several elite universities to make recruitment, especially Harvard and Princeton University. Students in these universities are filled with the advertisement about their career fairs from social media. Meanwhile, recruiters talks about how brilliant these students would be if they get the opportunity to work at the Wall