Satrapi's Use Of Symbolism In Persepolis

The way Satrapi the author of Persepolis depicts emotion is unique, satrapi made of a lot of symbols that could be interpreted many ways depending on how the reader relates the book. While reading Persepolis you notice how the illustrations are more cartoony and childish while covering a very serious topic such as war, violence, revolution, demonstration, and executions. Satrapi uses herself as a child (Marji) to tell a serious story about her life and how she lived through it. For instance In “the Key pg. 102” marji is talking about “The key of paradise for poor people” young kids were looking forward to a better life but instead met with a deadly explosion with keys around their necks. The way Satrapi illustrates the kids dying on

153” Marji is saying goodbye to her parents the dialogue reads “I couldn’t bear looking at them there behind them glass. Nothing worse than saying goodbye. It’s a little like dying.” You can obviously tell how much her parents is going miss her and how much she’ll miss them but the illustrations amplifies the emotion of “sadness” by looking at the mother she passed out in the fathers hands and the fathers face is blacked out this could symbolize many different things. “Blacked out” could mean that the face of her father was so devastating that satarpi didn’t want to remember or that it was such a sad memory she couldn’t remember the face of her father. which is why Persepolis is so uniquely illustrated. The illustrations in Persepolis are very important. Here's why, It gives a more detailed description on how Marji is feeling. Not only does it add to the dialogue it gives the reader visual representation on what’s going on in the story. Words can only describe so much depending on the writing style of the author. With a visual representation the reader can see how the character feels rather than painting a picture in their

pg 70” Marji had just gotten news about her uncle being executed. This is obviously devastating news for Marji considering the time they spent together and how Satrapi describes him. With just the dialogue of the book the reader would get a general understanding of how Marji feels because she’s yelling at someone who’s important to her, which is God. while standing on her bed looking at him at eye level which gives the illusion of equal footing she’s telling him to “shut up, get out of my life i never want to see you again”. While the dialogue is enough to show how upset Marji is, the illustrations show that she’s done depending on God. the reader wouldn’t get the same feel from Persepolis if there were no illustrations. The way she illustrated Marji standing on her bed looking at good symbolizes equal footing or standing up to god. The fact that persepolis is a graphic novel , amplifies emotions in the reader. Rather than just dialogue, although some graphic novels can pull off the minimal illustrations and still tell the story well. This is different In Persepolis case, considering the art style and how emotion is portrayed in the book. For example in The water cell. PG 24” Marji’s Father was explaining to her that God didn’t choose the king and how her grandfather was a prince and also mentioned how he often went to jail because he became a communist. Marji's mother added how his life was full of pain. The words of the mother can obviously show