Oppression In Marjane Satrapi's The Complete Persepolis

Persepolis Essay In the book, “The Complete Persepolis”, by Marjane Satrapi, a war ensues in Iran, and the story details the life of a woman in her coming of age in such circumstances. It shows the many qualities of this three dimensional character called Marji, the protagonist. She starts as a young girl, and we accompany her on her journey to adulthood, through tragedy and triumph, we see many aspects of this young girl growing up in a broken country. One trend in the story, which stood out to me, is how her thought process is not different from ours, but the way in which she deals with authority certainly is. Therefore, a theme from the book “The Complete Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi is that oppression can heavily affect your attitude and characteristics, and how you deal with authority.

Like a teen in America, a nation founded on freedoms, teens go through a phase in which they rebel against their parents. Marji, however, from a young girl, rebels against her oppressors. On page 38, Marji and her maid decide to partake in a demonstration against the Shah to show their unhappiness with the regime. This shows a very early phase of rebellion, Marji, as a young girl is already rebelling against the state, not to mention her parents, as she was not supposed to be protesting. Her mother, however, was not supportive of her daughter putting herself in danger, and showed it by slapping her across the face on page 39. To sum this up, Marji disobeyed her parents and her oppressive regime at a young age, illustrating an element of variance from average children in the U.S. because we generally only rebel against our parents, having no apparent oppressive