I was a bit surprised going into Thursday's reading (p. 72-93), because it seemed like there was a sudden leap in time, and Marji was no longer a kid and had become a slightly angst-y teen? But then in class we learned that it really had only been a year. However, it seems like she had suddenly matured a lot from the content and the way she started telling the story.
I noticed that she was drawn in a different way before and after the floating in space page (p. 71). She now has longer and darker hair compared to the child-like bob before. Not sure if this is true for every girl, but I know quite a few girls (including myself) whose parents cut their hair into bobs as children and then they grew out their hair as they grew up, so the longer hair could be kind of a symbol of maturity? I also noticed that young Marji also had a rounder face shape compared to older Marji's longer, oval face shape. The round face is kind of an atypical little kid feature, so her new slightly elongated face shape also led me to believe that she was older.
The one year leap was a little disappointing at first, because I really enjoyed her innocent and quirky child point of view which was further enhanced by the accompanying bold and imaginative graphics. I was sad to see that there was less of the lightheartedness in the following chapters. The new seriousness does make sense to me, because it seems to go hand in hand with the darkening historical situation which is that the war has begun. So far there has also been a lot less of God in her drawings since she kind of exiled him after Anoosh is and more patriotism. What she wants to be is also changing or evolving from aspiring to be a prophet to something more conventional like a chemist. I think it's common for kids to want to be something very unique and prestigious like president, in Marji's case a prophet, and then as they grow older, they have more achievable and realistic aspirations like studying chemistry.
Even though I wasn't that happy at first with the change, I'm used to it and it's also very interesting comparing her younger chapters to her older ones. I like seeing the way she's evolving with all the other stuff going on and how she perceives the events differently than her younger self.
