In Persepolis, a bildungsroman genre graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, the main character experienced many events that made her become fully grown up in Iran, yet the turning point was her life in Vienna. A bildungsroman is a novel that describes the process in which the character grows from child to adult, which he or she has a reason to start a journey while the coming of age is difficult, suffering, uncomfortable, and long. There are many particular events where Marjane has many difficulties on the process of maturity. When Marjane is still a child in Iran, terrible historical events happened around her and formed her to become more mature. Although they made her become a mature child, the real part of her life that changed her were her
In Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, The Stranger by Albert Camus, and the current college process that I am engulfed in, existentialism proves itself to be true. Existentialism is intimidating until an overarching lesson is learned through the choices and responsibilities, passions (or lack thereof), and the isolation of a person, such as Marjane, Meursault, or myself. On the surface, the three of us are extremely dissimilar, but we all experience relatively negative things that teach us more than we knew before. Marjane Satrapi is a real woman who grew up in Iran, Meursault is a character from North Africa, and I am a real teenage girl from a small seaside town. Nonetheless, when it comes to existentialism, the three of us stand as examples of the legitimacy of its philosophy.
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is a graphic memoir that reveals the life of a woman growing up in pre-revolution and post-revolution Iran, as well as her experiences in Western countries. In this book, Marjane recalls and highlights historical events that affect her life during her upbringing in Iran. These include the oppression of the Shah, along with the rise and effects of the regime. These events are integrated into Persepolis in order to showcase their effects on Marjane and the other citizens of her country. These events’ inclusion are important due to the context and understanding that they grant readers unfamiliar with the text.
Imagine if everyone had a pre-determined negative image about you? This is what life was like for Marji, the protagonist of the novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. The book is set in the year 1980, in Iran where Islam was a major religion at the time. This is also the time for the Islamic Revolution which kicked the Shau out of office and made Iran a theocracy. In Persepolis, Satrapi challenges negative stereotypes about Iranians through important characters who oppose the Islamic Regime.
During the Islamic Revolution, religion was very important to the fundamentalist Islamic regime that took power over the secular state. In her graphic memoir, Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, a spiritual young girl, suffers a deep loss of faith due to the oppressive fundamentalist religion in Iran. This loss of faith causes Marji to experience disillusionment and a loss of identity, which greatly shapes her character. Through her experiences with God, Satrapi comments on the difference between spirituality and fundamentalist religion and displays the negative repercussions of an oppressive religious state.
When people believe in something, they must stand up for it and speak out. In Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Marji stands up for what she believes in against the government. Likewise, in The Importance of a Single Story, Chimamanda Adichie speaks out against what she believes in injust. Finally, Anthony Bourdain No Reservations shows him writing about the truth in Iran, despite political threats against him. It is essential for people to stand up for what they believe and resist unjust government, because this will lead to improvements in many aspects of people's lives .
Children are constantly learning about themselves and the world around them. As they grow up, their world expands from their home to peers and, eventually, to people and places they know about. Children should learn about themselves and develop a positive self-image if they have to be successful citizens in society. They must learn how different they are as well how alike they are in relation to others. Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is the story of Satrapi’s childhood growing up in a tumultuous post-revolutionary Iran.
In the graphic novel Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi incorporates the theme of rebellion throughout the novel. She emphasizes that rebellion is key to her coming of age story and is important to everyone’s coming of age story. The first sign of rebellion is when she wants to be a prophet, women didn’t work, let alone become prophets, she establishes in this moment that she was different from everyone else. Her parents play an important role in her rebellion, they encourage her to rebel, to be “avant garde” (6/1). For example, they buy her nikes, and jean jackets and allow her to reveal hair out of her hijab, they are pleased with Marjane wanting to be modern rather than a fundamentalist woman.Growing up I rebelled, I did so in a positive way I disliked to go outside and play like other kids, I enjoyed going to school and learning unlike the other kids. My mom grew up getting into fights and being a troublemaker in her neighborhood, she was surprised to see that I refrained from getting into trouble or getting involved with drugs and alcohol at a young age. Just like young Marjane I rebelled, and everyone looked at me different for being who I was. However, they do not always encourage her rebellion, her mother forces her to pray, “If anyone ever asks you pray during the day, say you pray, you understand?” (75/6) in this case her mother wanted her like everyone else to keep from being killed or taken away. In another instance she starts smoking
Persepolis, written by Marjane Satrapi, is a memoir depicting the life of a young girl growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran during the late 1970’s. Before the Islamic Revolution the country of Iran was run by a westernized ruler called the Shah. After the Shah is overthrown the country’s new government places new religious rules making if obligatory for women, and sometimes men, to wear specific clothing in public. A key theme I picked up on in the book is the theme of rights, specifically women's rights.
She knew that it wasn’t all perfect and good but she also knew that it was not a cesspool of despair and darkness that some people make it out to be. So, she wrote the novel in a very smart way, she uses literary devices to show and tell a fantastic story but at the same time uses it as a way to talk about the problems and good things about Iran in the 1970s. This allows Persepolis to live longer and be discussed much longer if she simply didn’t use metaphors. It is also a way to show and teach people about a very heated subject and show them not everything is totally black and white in this world and that sometimes the monsters are actually men but at the very same time people can be great, people can work together to further a cause, people can care and at the end of the day people in Iran are exactly that, people and Marjane Satrapi simply wanted to show that in her novel and she succeeded
Liberties outside of Iran are especially different to a person who has never known anything but a specific type of culture. For example, on her way back to her friend’s house from the airport in Austria, Satrapi thinks, “What a traitor! While people were dying in our country, she was talking to me about trivial things” (156/7). From this we are able to see how the regime brainwashed Satrapi into thinking a specific way, especially because of the veil. When always necessary to wear the veil in public, she must adapt to life without the veil in order to function in a society where one can be free. As seen during her time at the school in Vienna, she took “some trims off the left and right,” “coated her hair with gel,” “added a thick line of eyeliner,” “and a few safety pins that were replaced by a scarf to soften the look” (190/1-8). By doing these few things, she has already done something that would never have been even allowed in public under the rule of the regime, including being able to wear makeup and short hair. Those were seen to be as “rebellious actions against the regime.” Yet even though she seemed to have changed into a modern western woman, when her boyfriend, Enrique, told her about a revolutionary party, it “reminded her of the commitment and the battles of her childhood,” in which they would dress up as leaders to “take over
The first chapter "The Veil" carries a great deal of weight. It is the chapter that sets the tone for the entire autobiography, it shows the difficulties for women in Iran in those years, and that's an issue that Satrapi highlights in the autobiography. Whitlock says about that matter that:
‘Persepolis’ by Marjane Satrapi tells an autobiographical story of a chaotic childhood. The story gives an amusing but also a nostalgic overview, a young girl’s life whose life is challenged by the Iranian revolution of 1980s. Satrapi’s detailed narration combined with the format of a graphic novel, challenges reader’s pre-established perception of Iran and gender. The book review will evaluate the paperback through 4 key themes that appear throughout the text: the significance of female narration and what does the reader gain from hearing Marjane’s point of view; the second theme that will be discussed is the dominant theme of the woman and the nation; thirdly, the contrasting dichotomy of the past and the present, and finally presenting
My understanding and exploration of Persepolis, the tale of young Iranian girl was looked at through a feminist lense, therefore noticing the cultural differences and the role of women in Iran in contrast to that of my own. However, I also was interested by the role of religion in the book which was omnipresent.
During the oral discussion, the students discussed intepretators and different ideas for their different views on the graphic novel Persepolis. There were an ample amount of tangent within the conversation per topic. Even with the tangents, the main topics that were discussed and reviewed were the students opinion on Persepolis, how others might have different interpretations of the book, as well as the effects the book had by being written in a different language. The interactive oral changes my perception and interpretation on the novel by a nonsignificant amount the points made did the interpretation just by a hint.