Examples Of Identity In The Complete Persepolis

In The Complete Persepolis, the central conflict in this book is Marjane’s identity. Over the course of the second third of this book, Marjane spends a lot of the story attempting to establish her identity. While a young girl in Iran, Marjane struggled with her religious identity. She was a deeply spiritual child, but after seeing how religion was used negatively by the Islamic Regime while also growing up in a “modern” family who were not religious, she became unsure of what to believe. Later, after moving to Vienna to escape the repressive regime in place while the country engaged in war with Iraq, she was forced to reconsider her identity as an Iranian woman. When she embraces her Iranian side, she is seen by many people in Vienna to she

While in school, her teacher taught the students this propaganda saying that the regime was founded, and there have been no political prisoners. Marjane, however, knows this was a lie as her uncle was executed as a political prisoner under the orders of the regime earlier in the novel, she corrected the teacher and class by saying, “You say that we don’t have political prisoners anymore. But we’ve gone from 300 prisoners under the Shah to 300,000 under your regime” (Satrapi 144). Misinformation was spread through the education system to convince young, impressionable kids that being ruled by the Islamic Regime is far better than being ruled by the Shah. Marjane, however, was lucky enough to be educated about the topic at hand and bravely corrected her teacher without fearing the repercussion because she could not allow this misinformation to be spread. Marjane is an upstander who is always fighting with authority to speak on behalf of a cause, in this case, the opposition against the Islamic Regime. Like Armin Wegner, an upstander who documented the injustices of the Armenian Genocide, Marjane risked her life and well-being to make misinformation