Davis Coziahr
Mrs. Sondag
IB Language Arts 11
May 8, 2023
How Heroes and Nationalism Shape Pride in Persepolis
The graphic novel Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, is a memoir about her growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution. The reader follows the younger Satrapi as she battles with finding how she feels under a new government in Iran. From books telling her one thing and her parents telling her the opposite, to seeing her friend under a fallen building, Satrapi searches to find her identity. As the war rages on and a new form of government takes place, heroes are being idolized and martyrs are becoming the symbol of the revolution. Satrapi realizes that this new government might not be all it says to be, and she questions her pride
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In the beginning of the graphic novel, Satrapi uses heroes in her life to show pride in her Iranian culture. Persepolis starts as the reader meets Marji during the start of the revolution. The girls are forced to wear veils to cover their heads and are separated from boys because of the new regime. She states that she wants to be a prophet but hides this from her parents. She likes to read and takes an interest in books about dictators like Karl Marx and Fidel Castro. While the revolution is starting, Marji thinks that a single leader is good and supports the Shah. Her school books, which were made before the revolution, support her ideas. When she learns that her parents went to a protest against the regime she says “As for me, I love the king, he was chosen by god '' (Satrapi 19). Since Marji is very religious, she will support anything that is appointed by god. Marji loves her country and believes that the Shah is a hero to her culture. She shows pride and nationalism during this time which many people don’t. Only after she realizes the social class difference do her views start to change. Later, once the …show more content…
Soon after she meets her uncle Anoosh, Marji finds out that he will be executed by the regime for being a spy. After his death, Marji writes “And so I was lost, without any bearings… what could be worse than that” (Satrapi 71). The lack of light in the illustration helps show how lost she truly was. She had exclaimed that Anoosh was a hero, but now that he was dead and died for his cause, Marji doesn’t want him to be a hero, she just wants him to be alive. Something she once was proud of has changed in the blink of an eye. After the execution, Marji starts to lose pride in her culture and wants to support the revolution. The juxtaposition of light and darkness in this frame shows how lost she was. Something she once believed with all her heart she now has shame in. Marji also loses her faith in this moment, kicking out god from her life. Religion was a big part of her culture and an even bigger part of her pride as a human being. Her views quickly change after this, however. As the revolution starts to pick up speed, the leaders of the revolution decide that the schools and universities will be closed in order to rewrite the books that the children have been reading. They say the books are leading the youth off the path of Islam. This crushes Marji’s dream of becoming a doctor and wanting to be the next Marie Curie. Satrapi writes “I wanted to be an educated, liberated woman” (Satrapi
People are like cameras and their personal experiences can be their lenses that change and modify the actual picture. This evident in Marjane Satrapi’s book Persepolis because the whole book is about a girl growing up, and forming her own opinions. Furthermore, Marjane has to mature in the turmoil of an Iranian-Iraqi war, she also has to survive the brutal Islamic regime governing her. This creates a very particular point of view considering that the parents raising Marjane are against the new form of government, and actively protest, risking their lives. As a result, this rubs off on her creating a very rebellious and dauntless little girl, who isn’t afraid of the new oppressors.
Satrapi is noticeably confused by this, as her teacher completely switched her beliefs and Satrapi is now punished for doing something that was expected of her when the Shah was in power. Another example of Satrapi’s confusion after the Shah steps down from power comes only pages later in the book. Satrapi and her friends talk about one of their peers, Ramin, whose father was in the Shah’s secret police. Satrapi and her friends want to do the right thing, so they figure that in the name of justice, they should beat up Ramin with nails. Luckily, Marjane’s mother comes by before they get a chance to.
Marji experiences in full force for the first time when her uncle Anoosh died: “That was the last time I had seen my beloved Anoosh… Shut up You! Get out of my life!!! I never want to see You again!” (Satrapi 70).
Marjane continues to say, “I read all the books I could.” (Satrapi 40). Not only does Marjane read about the events raging in Iran, she experiences them as well. Marjane soon realizes, from her real life experiences and the books, that her world is very much imperfect. After she learns the terrible ways of the people around her and the reasons behind the revolution, she decides to smoke a ciggerate and lose her innocence compleatly.
Have you ever heard two people having a discussion about a topic, but they have different opinions? Acknowledging the fact that people could have different opinions based on their own perspectives is very important. In Persepolis, Marjane writes as her 10 year old self, sharing what she experienced in Iran, while they were in the middle of a revolution. Throughout the book, she gets older and her perspective changes multiple times over several different topics. Marjane Satrapi’s perspective affects her presentation of imperialism, religion and loss of innocence.
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.
Religion has been the cause of different outbreaks such as ‘The Crusades’ and several terrorist attacks which date not very far away from today and more relevant to this topic the Iranian Revolution, but how can this “collection of beliefs” be the reason for someone to change their way of thinking, especially in such a religious country like Iran. The story of Persepolis, written by Marjane Satrapi tells us the story of her life in Iran before and after the revolution showing us the different ‘personalities’ she goes through, from innocent girl to a disaffected teenager. In this story Satrapi exploits different themes such as the heterogeneity in regions with Iran and the rest of the world, warfare and politics but one that stands out and is presented through the whole book is religion. Religion is portrayed as an excuse to start a conflict and it shows the personal development of characters, in this case the protagonist Marji.
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.
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 theme of repression is an ever-present issue in Persepolis. The picture on the right shows a bearded Islamist explaining to children why the veil needs to be imposed to counter Westernization. However, Satrapi’s home was a place of liberal values and free expression. This is shown in the scene where Marji is split between
The graphic novel, Persepolis that is written by Satrapi depicts the coming of age story of Marjane and her experiences during and after the Iranian war. Through Marjane’s experiences, the character frequently encounters the hardship and conflict of growing up. However, these hardships are major factors that shape Marjane as a character and establish the context of the novel. Within this novel, Satrapi uses graphic novel conventions and literary devices to convey the conflict of Marjane; with herself, with man (in the form of her teachers), and with the society that is revealed in Persepolis.
The graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is an animated ‘identity crisis’ showing how she has trouble reconciling the Eastern and Western values that she has been influenced by. By ‘identity crisis’ I mean Marjane is uncertain about who she is and where she belongs to. The Eastern values would include hierarchy, restraint, collectivism and deference, whereas the Western values would include equality, freedom of expression, individualism and self-assertion. A graphic novel can be defined as a book containing a long story told mostly in pictures but with some writing. I intend to investigate why Satrapi has chosen to use the graphic novel instead of using other styles to present Marjane attempts to reconcile the different values and find
Effects on the Memoir Persepolis Marjane Satrapi’s novel Persepolis describes experiences during the Islamic Regime that leave people suffering, dying, and fighting for a better government. Marjane Satrapi uses a comic layout to illustrate what is difficult to say in words. Her panel design depicts images of her, her family, and friends as well as how people in the community are reacting to the different events of the revolution. The use of panel design assists the memoir by making Satrapi’s purpose of portraying information more successful. Throughout the novel Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi uses panel design to advance the reader 's’ knowledge of the many situations occurring in Iran that cause distress to many individuals rebelling against the regime.
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
Have you ever read a graphic novel with a variety of worldwide problems? From: racial issues, economic issues, women’s rights, political repression, social issues etcetera. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is the authors memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Marjane Satrapi tells her story through black and white comic strips of her life in Tehran from her childhood ages six to fourteen. Persepolis portrays a memorable portrait of daily life in Iran, as well the perplexing contradictions between home life and public life.