Loss Of Innocence In Persepolis

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Innocence is something one can never get back once they lose it. The book Persepolis has the loss of innocence as one of its main themes. Although Marjane tried to not change and lose her innocence, ultimately she could not escape certain events from changing her such as her love of her god dissappearing, getting expelled and experiencing the horrors of war.
First, the loss of her beliefs in God have impacted Marjane greatly. Marjane is a very religious person at the start of the book, stating,"At the age of six, I was already sure I was the last prophet."(Satrapi 6). Later, she pushes away her God as seen on page 70, as a reaction to when Anoosh dies. At the beginning of the book, Marjane naiively believes that she is the prophet. She has not experienced the horrors of the revolution, as it has not happened yet. This is shown by her optimism at the beginning of the story, which slowly declines, impacted by many events. This wears her down slowly, until she is entirely broken by Anoosh's death. When she later meets God, she snaps at him, telling him to go away and never come back, leaving her entirely alone. This is not an optimistic …show more content…

This is the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. It continues for the entire rest of the book, with other things happening that are traumatic, such as Marjane's neighbors being bombed on page 142. These events show a major shift in how Marjane is experiencing her life. Up until the start of the war, she has never had to worry about large-scale violence near to her, however she now needs to. The atrocities she has seen, such as the hand with the bracelet in the rubble of the baba-levy's house was sickening to her, and she had only seen violence recently at that point. The complete destruction of her world has forced her to accept what she has seen, and therefore losing her innocence. One may argue that this violence doesn't mature her, however it does caue her to lose