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Violence In Persepolis

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Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood is a coming of age tale set during the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the early years of the Islamic Republic that followed. An autobiographical graphic novel written by Marjane “Marji” Satrapi, Persepolis tactfully merges the traditional tropes of young adult literature with heavier themes pertaining to the late twentieth century of Persia, particularly those regarding religious freedom. Specifically, a young Marji must navigate a difficult transition to adulthood while discovering her spirituality as the Iranian religious elite take over the government. Though these fanatics try their best to force conservative Islam on the Iranian populace, they ironically end up losing control over their more secular subjects, …show more content…

While clearly shown to have a resented authority over these people, they do not hold sway over any of their beliefs. As they try to tighten their hands over the populace, like a bar of soap, the populace becomes more liable to slip away. The commodity that both communicates and causes this loss of power is fear. The government of the Islamic Republic demonstrates its willingness to scare Iranian people into order through a constant use of violence against transgressors. From killing off the former revolutionaries to beating women who do not wear the veil, violence and fear appear to be the intended method of control. However, this commodity is proven to be very effective at causing people to shrink away from both the law and Islam. When the extremists violently execute her uncle to instill fear in future revolutionaries, Marji commits apostasy. When her school promotes a demoralizing system to discipline young girls, Marji rebels against her teachers. Thus, fear, intended to communicate control over these people’s lives, instead acts more like a sort of anti-commodity, shown to cause a lack of respect for the theocracy’s ideals. In this way, Satrapi’s Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, is in fact a criticism of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s poor and ineffective administrative

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In Persepolis, Satrapi uses comic relief to express the underestimated effects of fear during violent times. Three examples of comic relief occur in “The Key”, “The Wine”, and “The Cigarette”, three consecutive chapters where rebellion against the regime takes place. In these chapters, the fear of authority and punishment is evident. In “The Key”, Marji and her friends make fun of fundamentalist rituals in their school. Although the teacher threatens them with suspension and expulsion, Marji, her friends, and their parents remain “completely united” (97) because in order “for a revolution to succeed, the entire population must support it” (17).

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Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is a graphic memoir that reveals the life of a woman growing up in pre-revolution and post-revolution Iran, as well as her experiences in Western countries. In this book, Marjane recalls and highlights historical events that affect her life during her upbringing in Iran. These include the oppression of the Shah, along with the rise and effects of the regime. These events are integrated into Persepolis in order to showcase their effects on Marjane and the other citizens of her country. These events’ inclusion are important due to the context and understanding that they grant readers unfamiliar with the text.

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People are like cameras and their personal experiences can be their lenses that change and modify the actual picture. This evident in Marjane Satrapi’s book Persepolis because the whole book is about a girl growing up, and forming her own opinions. Furthermore, Marjane has to mature in the turmoil of an Iranian-Iraqi war, she also has to survive the brutal Islamic regime governing her. This creates a very particular point of view considering that the parents raising Marjane are against the new form of government, and actively protest, risking their lives. As a result, this rubs off on her creating a very rebellious and dauntless little girl, who isn’t afraid of the new oppressors.

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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.

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Importance of religion in Iran and its society is a crucial point in this graphic novel, Persepolis: A Story of a Childhood. It was mentioned in the novel how the society was corrupted when the Shah took charge. When the Shah took over, this lead to the many rebellions and demonstrations Iran had in order to keep the peoples freedom. The significance of women and how they were treated was also affected when everything changed during the 1980’s. Women are treated not only like trophy wives but they also did not have any sort of freedom for themselves.

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During the Islamic Revolution, religion was very important to the fundamentalist Islamic regime that took power over the secular state. In her graphic memoir, Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi, a spiritual young girl, suffers a deep loss of faith due to the oppressive fundamentalist religion in Iran. This loss of faith causes Marji to experience disillusionment and a loss of identity, which greatly shapes her character. Through her experiences with God, Satrapi comments on the difference between spirituality and fundamentalist religion and displays the negative repercussions of an oppressive religious state.

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Have you ever wondered why girls and women in the Middle East are obliged to cover their heads wearing a black veil? Have you ever wondered why the Shah of Iran was executed? You can find the answers to these questions in the book entitled Persepolis. A nine-year-old, rebellious Marjane lives in Iran in the 1980s during the Islamic Revolution when the new Islamic governmental law forced all young girls to wear a veil and to move to female schools. Her parents and extended family fought against the new Islamic regime, but after four years, fearing for their daughter’s safety they sent her to Austria alone.

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To what extent is literary devices used as an instrument to show social, racial, and class differences in Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi? The novelist, Marjane Satrapi, wrote, Persepolis, as a graphic novel to display other countries the progression of the Iranian Revolution through a bildungsroman perspective. The author uses literary devices several times as it narrates the sentiment of Marjane Satrapi as well as civilization in Iran. Marjane Satrapi segregates the western culture to the eastern culture by restating the Iranian Revolution into a graphic novel. The author’s panache affects how the audience interprets the scenario tremendously; Marjane Satrapi ensures this by using imagery.

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The role of politics in Marjane Satrapi 's life is a critical one, as seen in her graphic novel Persepolis, which narrates her experiences as a young girl raised by revolutionaries during turbulent times in Iran. Particularly, Satrapi uses juxtaposition between her parents and children to highlight the hypocrisy and myopia of the upper class revolutionaries when it comes to the interpretation and implementation of their political ideology. Satrapi builds the foundation of her criticism through the superficial comprehension her child self exhibits regarding her parents '—and, by extension, upper class communists '—ideals, then warns about the dangers that such lack of understanding presents through child soldiers who are fed ideologies and then sent to war. However, while pointing out the shortcomings of the movement, Satrapi 's use of children as the vessels for comparison entails that there is room for the communist community to develop, like Marji does as she matures from child to teen, and encourage equality through the removal of social barriers created through binaristic thinking to truly promote communist ideals. The first point of juxtaposition is Marji herself, particularly her initial myopic thinking as a child.

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957 Words | 4 Pages

Children are constantly learning about themselves and the world around them. As they grow up, their world expands from their home to peers and, eventually, to people and places they know about. Children should learn about themselves and develop a positive self-image if they have to be successful citizens in society. They must learn how different they are as well how alike they are in relation to others. Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is the story of Satrapi’s childhood growing up in a tumultuous post-revolutionary Iran.

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1203 Words | 5 Pages

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

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976 Words | 4 Pages

The graphic novel, Persepolis that is written by Satrapi depicts the coming of age story of Marjane and her experiences during and after the Iranian war. Through Marjane’s experiences, the character frequently encounters the hardship and conflict of growing up. However, these hardships are major factors that shape Marjane as a character and establish the context of the novel. Within this novel, Satrapi uses graphic novel conventions and literary devices to convey the conflict of Marjane; with herself, with man (in the form of her teachers), and with the society that is revealed in Persepolis.

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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.

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The graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is an animated ‘identity crisis’ showing how she has trouble reconciling the Eastern and Western values that she has been influenced by. By ‘identity crisis’ I mean Marjane is uncertain about who she is and where she belongs to. The Eastern values would include hierarchy, restraint, collectivism and deference, whereas the Western values would include equality, freedom of expression, individualism and self-assertion. A graphic novel can be defined as a book containing a long story told mostly in pictures but with some writing. I intend to investigate why Satrapi has chosen to use the graphic novel instead of using other styles to present Marjane attempts to reconcile the different values and find

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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.

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