Claudia Whitmer Moore English 2 21 May 2024 Comparative analysis of Elie Wiesel’s Night and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis In both of their debut novels, Elie Wiesel and Marjane Satrapi explore the process of maturing within an oppressive environment. Wiesel recounts his experiences as a Jew in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Marjane illustrates her childhood in Iran during and after its revolution. Difficult situations and experiences can disconnect individuals from their identity, religious and personal, even years afterward. Both of these were written years after the events that take place within them, and the books use this fact to emphasize how they developed. In Persepolis, there is past-tense narration throughout, with references …show more content…
The flashback structure of both novels puts the narrator both during and after the events together to more explicitly show how they changed along the way. The narrators’ development is also shown through multiple metaphors in each, both as single events and throughout. In Persepolis, it starts on the very first page. From the veil's first requirement, Marji is opposed to it but “the hijab becomes a part of daily life, and the consequences for being caught without it—or for being caught with the Western tapes Marji buys on the black market—are far worse than the grounding a Western teenager might receive” (Gard) so she doesn't have the choice. She, and others, are forced to conform and may lose the desire to do otherwise, gradually degrading their true unique identities. Despite this, she retains her contrarian nature while still growing. In an act of rebellion, she smokes for the first time and says that “With this first cigarette, I kissed my childhood goodbye” (117). This marks a turning point in her character as the cigarette is a symbol of both adulthood and Western culture, she's delving further into them and permanently away from the society forced on