Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis Essay

Have you ever wondered why girls and women in the Middle East are obliged to cover their heads wearing a black veil? Have you ever wondered why the Shah of Iran was executed? You can find the answers to these questions in the book entitled Persepolis. A nine-year-old, rebellious Marjane lives in Iran in the 1980s during the Islamic Revolution when the new Islamic governmental law forced all young girls to wear a veil and to move to female schools. Her parents and extended family fought against the new Islamic regime, but after four years, fearing for their daughter’s safety they sent her to Austria alone. In Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood Satrapi uses mood, theme, and characterization in her memoir to demonstrate how her suffering during the Islamic Revolution in the 1980s led to her migration and how political problems could lead into suffering of innocent people.

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.

The Meaning of Satrapi’s Suicide Attempts in Persepolis Marjane grew up in a place where her ideas did not conform to the laws practices, or society as a whole. After a short amount of time in her youth, she realized that she couldn’t find or even be who she was born to be, giving her several struggles growing up and many identity problems. In Iran, the Islamic fundamentalist were in power, and their rule was extremely strict; the last thing they wanted was women and minorities to rise against the power, so her feelings had to be suppressed in order to survive. After years of being shamed and hidden by the law, she fell in to deep depression, realizing that she did not want to live this way. Her suicide attempts come into play at this point, and you realize how badly oppression and identity struggles can affect a person.

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.

Get out of my life!!! I never want to see you again.”(70). Equally important to the theme of loss of innocence, nationalism also plays a big part in Persepolis. This picture shows a nationalist, this is relevant to the novel Persepolis because nationalism played a big part in Marjane 's family household, despite most of Marjane’s friends fleeing Iran due to all of the bombings and terror attacks, Marjane and her family stayed because they were Iranian nationalist. Marjane 's parents loved their country, and they went to many demonstrations and protest to make it a better place, they played such a big part in the Iranian protest that, “Her photo was published in all the European newspapers.

Her friends, boyfriends, and surroundings were the causes that altered her in her journey. Marjane came of age through her struggles in both Iran and Vienna by the surroundings and people around her.. Persepolis shows that coming of age can be affected by the historical and cultural events of the character’s childhood. In this novel, Marjane will unrestrainedly do whatever her parents are doing or did even though they command her not to. For example, when Marjane asked if she can go to the demonstration with her parents, she was refused. Then Marjane decided to go with her maid Mehri “Tomorrow we are going to demonstrate” (Satrapi 38).

Have your younger siblings ever had a completely different view on something such as where to go out for dinner or what show to watch on television? It is important to realize that the two of you are going to have different perspectives because you are at different ages and the two of you have different interests. As a matter of fact, Marjane Satrapi’s perspective as a child is different from when she gets older because of her loss of innocence, her political and social awareness, and her views on religion. At the beginning of Persepolis, Marjane is around the age of ten. By the end of the story, Marjane is around the age of fourteen.

Have you ever experienced anything that made you grow up faster than you should have? Have you ever been forced to do something that changed the way you live and think? Or have you ever tried to hide something you strongly believed in because other people 's perspective about you might change? This happens a lot in today 's society, but it also happened to Marjane Satrapi. Marjane tells her story through her novel, Persepolis, and it helps show how things in the world can drastically change someone’s perspective.

Similar to Marjane’s family, most modernists are secular. However the fundamentalist feel obligated to conform to Iran religious ideologies. Marjane is very furious with this deecre as shown through her facial expressions. She shows confidence in her beliefs that oppose to those of the Shah. To add on, Marjane is instantly judged for her forbidden apparel by the Guardians of the Revolution.

She starts to realize that her role as a woman is based on what her government decides. She soon starts to do little acts of defiance. She wears Nike shoes when she is not supposed to, she wears jeans and a michael Jackson pin, she shows her hair through her veil, and she defies the teachers to the point of where she is expelled. Marjane says “ I learned that you should always be louder than your aggressor” (pg. 143). She has a lot of trouble fitting in to the expectations of her school, mainly because she has suffered so much from the rule of the Islamic Revolution.

Over the course of constructing a literary work authors often use various cultures to contribute to their literary work. Cultures can also demonstrate deviations about everything such as social classes, religion, and education. In several different societies, they tend to reveal different beliefs to the world. However, some civilizations have similar concepts. religious aspects of different cultures around the world. An author known as Marjane Satrapi involves cultural aspects that she has encountered throughout her lifespan in her literary work. The book, Persepolis: A Story of a Childhood is a book that is deeply rooted with contexts of contributions that Marjane Satrapi included from her childhood memories. This then allows a reader to

She starts to fuse her views of the revolution to her religious ideology. “ It was funny to see how much Marx and God looked like each other. Though Marx’s hair was a bit curlier”(13). In the quote, Marjane is merging her perspective of her ministerial to her version of a dictative being. She isn’t doing this on purpose, the effect of the war is causing Marji to see people of a bad nature in a good light, she reads books like the Dialectic Materialism which stands in a biased viewpoint.

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. The purpose of this paper is to apprise the roles of

To what extent is the literary devices shown in Persepolis increase the impact of the novel and show the culture of Iran in the 1970s? In the novel Persepolis by Majane Satrapi, she tells the story of her life living in Iran in the 1970s. In this novel she discusses the atrocities committed by both sides of the bloody Iranian revolution and how both sides truly were. In the novel, Satrapi uses several literary devices to enhance the meaning of the novel to a much greater degree than directly telling the reader. Still, these literary devices also allow the reader to peer into the very culture of Iran in the novel and how certain objects can mean certain things both from within the culture and the context of the novel. From cigarettes being smoked by only adults, to veils being representative of a harsh and dictatorial regime.

However, Marjane 's expression is sad while she says this and shows she is not alright. This reveals that Marjane is in denial and how contradictory her words to her emotions are. Furthermore, the next page displays