Marjane Satrapi once said, “ I wanted to be justice, love and the wrath of God all in one”(9). Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi tells the story of a young girl during a political and religious turmoil that has a desire to fix social inequalities and make the world into a place where people don’t have to suffer much longer. From religious, warfare, and freedom standpoints; Marjane throughout the story faces a number of conflicts that shape her life growing up in such a harsh society and is overwhelmingly similar with the exception of a small difference to myself and how I approach certain complications within my culture. One example that ties myself to Marjane is our religion.
Persepolis Argumentative Essay “If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.” , (Alfie Kohn). In Persepolis, Mariji’s parents create a safe and free environment within their household to allow her to express herself freely. While she is growing up, she understands the meaning of the revolution through stories, books, and personal events because they provide her with knowledge and can affect her in the future.
In the graphic memoir Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi shows readers how tragic events can leave a huge impact on a young individual. As Marji grows up, she experiences multiple conflicts in terms of politics/government and the inequality in her country. One of which being the Shah, a ruler reigning over Iran. With all of the actions and that are performed as well as what was said by the Shah, it causes an uprising to arise which leads to a lot of violence within Iran. Marji witnesses deaths of those participating in the war, and it enlightens her to how dangerous and life threatening it could be.
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.
In Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, The Stranger by Albert Camus, and the current college process that I am engulfed in, existentialism proves itself to be true. Existentialism is intimidating until an overarching lesson is learned through the choices and responsibilities, passions (or lack thereof), and the isolation of a person, such as Marjane, Meursault, or myself. On the surface, the three of us are extremely dissimilar, but we all experience relatively negative things that teach us more than we knew before. Marjane Satrapi is a real woman who grew up in Iran, Meursault is a character from North Africa, and I am a real teenage girl from a small seaside town. Nonetheless, when it comes to existentialism, the three of us stand as examples of the legitimacy of its philosophy.
There are a variety of different ways to tell stories and get a point across to the reader. Persepolis is written as a graphic novel. A few reasons why it's more effective to convey Marjane's story by writing it as a graphic novel is because it helps the reader visualize what they’re reading as well as staying interested. It also helps the see the character’s feelings by looking at the facial expression. The book tells a story about the war against Iran and Iraq and the people's struggles living in Iran at the time.
In the book Persepolis, young Marjane has to live through the late 1970 's Iranian Revolution. In late October 1977, people were starting to show their dislike for their supreme leader, "The Shah. " It leaded to riots and major outbreaks in the nation.
Different segments of the Iranian society clearly suffered from plethora of issues the Shah had created for them. He made new land reforms and taxation which created problems for the peasants and merchants, the educated citizens of the society suffered from unemployment and lack of freedom, the Islamic scholars from their general loss of influence over the people. He westernized Iran which made many people believe they were getting far away from Islamic Principles. After years of pent up anger the people started to revolt against the shah. Iranians organized with the help of the religious establishment to overthrow the Shah and completely reform the Iranian political system.
Both these novels show the constant struggles that people have had to go through to survive. In Persepolis the people of Iran began to protest the Shah by demonstrating. Eventually the Shah fought back by ordering the police to burn down the Rex Cinema, where there were 400 people. “The doors had been locked from the outside a few minutes before the fire and they forbade people to rescue those locked inside, and then they attacked them.” (page 14).
Young children usually don’t comprehend the flawed world they live in for various reasons. For instance, parents tend to shelter their children from traumatic events; however, at some point children are forced to grow up and become involved in real world problems. In her novel, Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi experiences a numerous amount of events that shape and develop her perspective throughout the novel. Her perspective influences her presentation of loss of innocence, social classes, and gender roles. These things all alter the way she acts towards her family, friends, and God.
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
Everything can be viewed from two perspectives; A fist fight, a murder, bullying, just to name a few situations. This is still the case with Iran and it’s people. Iran and its neighboring countries are often portrayed negatively as terrorist, or failed nations. This is not always the truth, however, and one can learn that through Marjane’s coming of age story, Persepolis. The personal nature of the story is told through Marjane’s loss of innocence, her opinions on religion, and her observation of the prominent gender roles.
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.
Have your younger siblings ever had a completely different view on something such as where to go out for dinner or what show to watch on television? It is important to realize that the two of you are going to have different perspectives because you are at different ages and the two of you have different interests. As a matter of fact, Marjane Satrapi’s perspective as a child is different from when she gets older because of her loss of innocence, her political and social awareness, and her views on religion. At the beginning of Persepolis, Marjane is around the age of ten. By the end of the story, Marjane is around the age of fourteen.
The story begins with the life of marjane and ends with her life. But in the background, the novel involves the war in Iran. Iran is always at war which includes the Iranian revolution and the struggle of people after the revolution. Though these are not implied does not affect their significance. They have a very important function of shaping the actions of the characters of novel which have long lasting effects.
