How and Why Is a Social Group Represented in a Particular Way? Persepolis

Given that western clothes and icons were outlawed in conservative Iran, Marjane’s dressing up in jeans, denim jacket, and Nike shoes is an attempt to express her modern outlooks, Satrapi conveys the importance throughout the text reinforcing the conflict between Eastern values and Western values. In this scene, Satrapi embraces both cultures. She wears modern with a Michael Jackson button and Nike, and says ‘of course, my headscarf’. This displays Satrapi’s multiple personal identities: following middle eastern customs while sharing western values. A portrait image of Marjane is illustrated to show that she is proud of who she is and her posture and body language of her standing tall like she wants to show off her personality. But this doesn’t last long when she meets two guardians of the revolution that arrest women who are improperly arrested. When Marjane is caught, expressionism is used when Marjane is bawling her eyes out. The eyes look ghost-like representing the whole idea swapping personalities so that she could fit the government's likings. Marjane is not being able to fully express herself by wearing the clothes she wanted, doing her hair how she wanted, or listening to the music she wanted. From a young age is prevented Marjane from finding her identity and making her feel trapped. The revolution brought back Islamic ideals and customs, which were welcomed initially but soon became overbearing and restrictive and eventually totalitarian.

In Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, Satrapi states that her goal in writing the book was to dispel many of the hasty generalizations made by the western world about Iran, a principal sentiment being that the country is little more than a nation founded by fundamentalists and home to terrorists and extremists. To combat the misconception, Satrapi enlists the assistance examples of barriers and dissent towards the new conservative regime in Iran from her adolescence. By employing events from her childhood in Iran Satrapi rattles the foundation of the myths and false beliefs assumed by the occident. Satrapi writes that the initial waves of conservative fundamentalism in Iran were met with unified national dissent. To support this

Persepolis focuses on major themes like Feminism, Freedom, Religion, War, and Culture. Although this book is about Marjane Satrapi a young girl who lived her childhood in Iran from the 1980’s which was during the Iran revolution, where at a young age she’s already opened up to a warfare environment. This book can be interpreted differently based on the reader’s location, history background with Iran, and the differences in government. In this essay we would be comparing the readers from Iran vs. America.

At the same time, Marjane feels tension between her parents' political actions. Their belief in equality for the working class

Marjane, or ‘Marji’ and her family deeply value the freedom of expression, and go to great lengths to retain this freedom when it is jeopardized after the revolution. In the

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis recounts the conflicts and disillusionment as a result of living through the tyrannies of the Shah’s and the Islamic regimes. Her main motive was to keep alive the spirit of those Iranians who lost their lives in wars fought for freedom, suffered under repressive regimes or who were forced to leave their families. It highlights the daily conflict between tradition and modernity, West and East, dictatorship and individual freedom. Marjane has used several motifs, such as the veil, the mirror, background panels to emphasize on the situation in Iran and this essay focuses on how the veil becomes the dominant motif for portraying the suppression of individual freedom, knowledge

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi is a graphic novel that provides insight into a young girl living in Iran during the hardship of war. Persepolis takes place during the childhood of Marjane Satrapi. It gives a background of the Islamic Revolution and the war in Iran. Satrapi attempts to guide herself in a corrupted world filled with propaganda. She tries to develop her own morality concerning religion, politics, and humanity. Satrapi was blessed enough to have high class status and parents who had an open mindset about the world around them. Thanks to her slightly alternative lifestyle, she is able to reconstruct gender norms that society has set by depicting the different ways women resist them. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others” by Lila Abu-Lughod is an essay detailing the misconceptions surrounding the veil. Through this essay we can see how colonial feminism, the form of feminism in which western women push for a western way of living on their third world counterparts, has shined a negative light on cultures all around the world - particularly Islamic women. The essay shows how women who don’t conform to American societal structures are labeled as women who urgently require saving. Through this essay one can develop a thorough understanding of the veil itself and the many representations it holds to different entities. Although in Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood Satrapi

On pages 3 and 4, Marjane gives us the years for, when the revolution began, when children were required to wear a veil and her date of birth. The dates, enable the reader to get a sense the time period and the historical background of Iran. Timelines are imperative to understanding her life story. Next, Satrapi demonstrates pathos through illustrations and the speech bubbles. The emotions of the characters can be shown through their facial expressions and actions they take.

In The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, she provides a detailed account of what it was like to live amidst the Islamic revolution. She does so by depicting her life through a series of comic strips, which allows the reader to gain a better understanding of expressions and emotions of the characters throughout the story. In this unique coming of age story, Marji constantly struggles with the pressure to conform to cultural norms, most notably in the three different schools she attends: her elementary school in Tehran, her high school in Vienna, and at the university in Tehran.

(7). Her grandmother also buys her books to help educate her on what is going on in their country (28). Both of these actions display that her grandmother wants her to be educated and also wants Marji to do whatever she desires and teaches her that she truly can be whatever she wishes. Before Marji leaves to go to Austria, her grandmother tells her “always keep your dignity and be true to yourself” (150). This is something that continually goes through Marji’s mind as she begins to make mistakes, being true to herself is something Marji is constantly struggling for and becomes a major theme throughout the novel. In the end of the novel Marji learns how to be true to herself and her ambitions as she divorces Reza and moves to Paris, which was an action heavily based on the ethics and teachings of her grandmother.

In the novel they discuss many events that occurred during the revolution. The government shut down the U.S. embassy and the universities, all women were forced to wear the veil and Iraqi fighter jets bombed Tehran.iii When her parents travel to Turkey they break the law by smuggling posters in her father’s jacket. If the government knew what her family did, her parents would have been arrested. Marji's family also drinks and throws parties, which is illegal and continues with their dangerous conduct because they enjoy it. Just because the Shah has made it illegal does not stop her parent’s actions. Eventually, Marji’s mother’s pessimism won out over her father’s optimism. The Iraqis had missiles and the Tehran became the target.

The alternative book cover features Marjane Satrapi at four different stages of her life. The pictures represent a transition and provide an overview of Satrapi’s life from her childhood to her return in Iran. It depicts Satrapi’s personal life as well as the social and political progress towards liberalism in Iran in the span of her departure and her return, which is few if any at all. The first picture is Satrapi during her childhood in Iran, just after the Iranian Revolution, which deposed the Shah and allow Ayatollah Khomeini to rise to power. Ayatollah Khomeini began by reforming many aspects of life in Iran, shutting down schools in order to reform education policies, and requiring all women to wear hijabs and wear long robes that

Over the following four years, Marji learned of how her grandparents were left poor because of the Shah, the leader of the Iranian government. Shah was well known for robing men and women of everything they had worked for and leaving them with nothing. Nevertheless, Marji was schooled on the different levels of society in Iran, which left her to consider her family as rich because her Dad drove a Cadillac. Despite being a child, Marji accused her dad of being anti-social towards a class that could not read and write. To clarify Marji helped out a friend with the writing of some love letters. Mehi was the family maid that could not read or write. Mehi fell in love with the boy

After the revolution that was sparked by a group of islamic fundamentalists, the people’s support for western ways of life had to be abandoned. That made Iran a more islamic country with a government that reinforces the word and doctrine of Allah. This affected Marjane because she is a westernized woman and grew up in a westernized environment. The context proves that Marjane felt alienated from her culture and society because it’s not where she belongs. This is proven in the chapter ‘’The Socks’’, where Marjane organizes private parties in which she has fun with other women without respecting the society and its restrictions. It also shows a juxtaposition between her behaviour in public and and her behaviour in private. This shows that even if the society obligates her to act less westernized, she continues to do whatever she likes but privately. This proves again the theme of rebellion, she is a rebellious person since her

Marji’s hatred towards the new Islamic government due to the oppression her loved ones have had to endure, causes her to act out and rebel against the law. There are many instances of Marji’s defiance against the government and religion. One example of her rebellious nature is exemplified when she and her maid, Mehri, decide that “tomorrow [they] are going to demonstrate” (Satrapi, 38). She makes this decision after discovering the truth on social hierarchy and the government in Iran. She wants to support the Iranian citizens in fighting against the rules and religion to make Iran a free country again. Another example