View a FREE sample

1. Name one theme depicted within the epigraph of the novel Disoriental.

The epigraph of Djavadi's novel entitled Disoriental contains a quote by the feminist musician PJ Harvey. The quote states, "One day there’ll be a place for us/ A place called home," (7) evoking themes such as displacement and the search for community. Both of these themes are then depicted within the first three pages of the text, making it easy for students to draw these connections, even if they have read only the prologue of the novel.

2. In what way does Kimiâ acknowledge within the prologue her own fallibility as a narrator?

Kimiâ names her father Darius's distaste for escalators as "part of what made [her] decide to tell this story, even without knowing where to begin" (12) and says, "All I know is that these pages won't be linear" because they will "be guided by the flow of images and free associations" and "the hollows and bumps carved into [her] memories by time" (13). Without starting a new paragraph, Kimiâ asks the reader to consider the "strange" (13) nature of memory and how "memories select, eliminate, exaggerate, minimize, glorify," and "denigrate" (13). Thus, Kimiâ points to not only her own relative unreliability as a narrator, but to the unreliability of every narrator who has ever told a story.

(read all 60 Short Essay Questions and Answers)

This section contains 6,927 words (approx. 24 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample