“Persepolis: The Story of A Childhood” by Marjane Satrapi The novel “Persepolis” shows many life changes during the Islamic Revolution told through the eyes of a young girl. “Persepolis” was based on Satrapi’s childhood experience in Iran. Throughout the span of the 1970’s to the early 1980’s, Satrapi experiences many changes in her life, not only with the government, or her education, but also with herself. Although she witnessed many violent acts right in front of her eyes, these experiences helped Marji (Satrapi) grow as a young girl. Soon after the revolution, Iran became one bundle of chaos as the country began experiencing internal difficulties with the new republic. Then, with the war between Iran and Iraq, violence became Marji’s daily lifestyle. The Iranians were left to themselves to protect their friends and family from the bombings and other types of violence occuring in plain sight. Many unfortunate individuals lost their belongings as well as close friends and family. For example, a close friend of Marji’s mother, Mali (and her family), lost their belongings in a serious bombing. Their family found refuge in Marji’s home until they left Iran for good. They were one of the few families who understood the severity of the violence overwhelming Iran. Along with many other changes, Iranians were recruiting young boys to join their military. They brainwashed the young boys with a plastic key painted gold; explaining to them that if they were fortunate enough to
“It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.” -Eric Hoffer. The Iranian Revolution was a time of change in Iran, occuring after the Shah had tried westernizing the country by removing certain Islamic ideals. He had tried forcing people to dress and act certain ways that might seem better than the old, but the people did not like being made to do certain things. This caused a revolt against the Shah, and implementing a new government quite similar to the one before the Shah.
While this is happening, none of the people in Iran are fully aware of how to react because the country didn’t have a leader at the time. Marjane had to experience this imperialism during her teenage years and it played a large role in her perspective. To demonstrate this in the book, it says, “‘God did not choose the king. ’[said Marjane’s father] ‘He did so!
There is an established thought that every person must be an active participant in their life, and this is done by making choices; however, it is accepting responsibility that controls our lives and the people around us. Marjane Satrapi is an outspoken female, who is not afraid to stand up for something she believes in. As she grew up, Islamic Fundamentalists created strict moral and dress codes for the people of Iran. As a woman, she was forced to wear a hijab in a certain manner. At the time, Marjane was studying at an art school.
Marjane Satrapi uses a variety of graphic techniques, specifically on pages 61 and 137, to describe the way that Iran’s oppressive environment has forced Marji’s young, optimistic mind to think in a way that is painfully realistic. Throughout the book, Satrapi’s style of drawing is signature and
Importance of religion in Iran and its society is a crucial point in this graphic novel, Persepolis: A Story of a Childhood. It was mentioned in the novel how the society was corrupted when the Shah took charge. When the Shah took over, this lead to the many rebellions and demonstrations Iran had in order to keep the peoples freedom. The significance of women and how they were treated was also affected when everything changed during the 1980’s. Women are treated not only like trophy wives but they also did not have any sort of freedom for themselves.
Without God as a guiding presence in her life, Marji began to rebel against the ever-encroaching fundamentalist institution as much as possible. Under the pretense of religion, Iran strictly enforced new laws against social gatherings and all items of decadence, “They found records and video-cassettes at their place. A deck of cards, a chess set, in other words, everything that’s banned… It earned him seventy-five lashes”(105). This sudden loss of mediums to enjoy one’s self and prevalence of excessive punishment enforcing the declared moral code (132) were invitations to rebel for Marji.
The story begins with the life of marjane and ends with her life. But in the background, the novel involves the war in Iran. Iran is always at war which includes the Iranian revolution and the struggle of people after the revolution. Though these are not implied does not affect their significance. They have a very important function of shaping the actions of the characters of novel which have long lasting effects.
In this text, the author exposes the principal character (Marji) as a girl that is affected by the 1980’s revolution that happened in Iran, and how this situation affected her identity search. Marji started to have critical experiences, when all the revolution began to take place, that’s why this character represent children
The role of politics in Marjane Satrapi 's life is a critical one, as seen in her graphic novel Persepolis, which narrates her experiences as a young girl raised by revolutionaries during turbulent times in Iran. Particularly, Satrapi uses juxtaposition between her parents and children to highlight the hypocrisy and myopia of the upper class revolutionaries when it comes to the interpretation and implementation of their political ideology. Satrapi builds the foundation of her criticism through the superficial comprehension her child self exhibits regarding her parents '—and, by extension, upper class communists '—ideals, then warns about the dangers that such lack of understanding presents through child soldiers who are fed ideologies and then sent to war. However, while pointing out the shortcomings of the movement, Satrapi 's use of children as the vessels for comparison entails that there is room for the communist community to develop, like Marji does as she matures from child to teen, and encourage equality through the removal of social barriers created through binaristic thinking to truly promote communist ideals. The first point of juxtaposition is Marji herself, particularly her initial myopic thinking as a child.
To what extent is literary devices used as an instrument to show social, racial, and class differences in Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi? The novelist, Marjane Satrapi, wrote, Persepolis, as a graphic novel to display other countries the progression of the Iranian Revolution through a bildungsroman perspective. The author uses literary devices several times as it narrates the sentiment of Marjane Satrapi as well as civilization in Iran. Marjane Satrapi segregates the western culture to the eastern culture by restating the Iranian Revolution into a graphic novel. The author’s panache affects how the audience interprets the scenario tremendously; Marjane Satrapi ensures this by using imagery.
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.
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.
The readers can see the transition of cultural background by noticing details within the image, for example, character’s clothing and how they dress themselves up. The transition of clothing and fashion represent cultural backgrounds that create struggles for Marjane and her search in self identity. The necessity of Iranian girls wearing veils indicates the regime taking over Iranian society further effect Marjane’s belief towards her identity. The first part of the book presents the background history of this graphic novel by saying, “In 1979 a revolution took over place.
Satrapi talks about the struggle of being Iranian with all of the bombing that occur and how Satrapi shows some stereotype in her book with displaying Iran people and Islamic religion. She portrays Islamic and Iranian people somewhat horribly with pictures of them doing horrible actions to their citizens (14/4-7) and what types of gruesome torture they do to them in jail (51/1-5). Another stereotype that I saw in the book was how Satrapi tried to breakdown the idea of agency. Usually in Third World countries they are portrayed as lacking in agency where they are often in need of help rather than active agents in helping themselves. However I felt that Persepolis had tried to breakdown this stereotype by showing that there were actually many heroes in Iran who had tried to fight for change.
Everything can be viewed from two perspectives; A fist fight, a murder, bullying, just to name a few situations. This is still the case with Iran and it’s people. Iran and its neighboring countries are often portrayed negatively as terrorist, or failed nations. This is not always the truth, however, and one can learn that through Marjane’s coming of age story, Persepolis. The personal nature of the story is told through Marjane’s loss of innocence, her opinions on religion, and her observation of the prominent gender roles.