Persepolis Review Essay

Adolescence is an age where children began to find themselves or, in some cases, lose themselves, an idea clearly developed by Satrapi in her graphic novel “Persepolis”. Satrapi explores the challenges and difficulties experienced by a sheltered and naive girl during the tumultuous and uncertain years of the Iranian revolution and attempts to solve the oppression she witnesses by the Islamicist government. This is important to the whole text as it identifies the religious conservatism and Islamisation of the state causes distress and confusion in Marjane who consequently had to redefine herself, given that her freedom and personal liberties were denied them in schools, public places, and even her own home.

Marjane Satrapi, the author of Persepolis, chose to write her story as a graphic novel. Throughout each page she gives many drawings in order to help the reader understand more in depth what is happening. I do not think her story would be as effective as it is with the help of these drawings. By looking at these different images we are able to understand more than just what she writes, we also have an opportunity to try to understand what she is portraying through these images. One key image she uses in the story is the image of the “Golden key.” The golden key is given to young boys during this historic time signifying the themes of death, hope, and the abuse of power.

Marjane Satrapi’s memoir Persepolis is considered a “coming of age” story based on her experiences growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. This graphic novel explores the life she lead in Tehran which encompassed the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. Undergoing life with such a chaotic environment, it took Satrapi courage to act and live as her “authentic self” and explore what it meant to her to be authentic. Similar to Aristotle, May and Medinas Persepolis examines the concept of courage, through the view of innocence; through Satrapi’s childhood.

As American singer-song writer Duncan Sheik once said, “It’s inevitable your environment will influence what you do.” It is not a secret that the environment a person grows up in helps shape their views of the world and how he or she perceives different issues. The United State of America are known as the melting pot. We have many cultures and races all living within the same cities working together peacefully for the most part. To outsiders America is the place to come to achieve the “American Dream”, and it is the place where fresh starts, entrepreneurship, and individualism are highly encouraged. There are freedoms in American that many other people across the world are not as lucky to have.

Throughout the Iranian Revolution, many events and changes took place that largely affected the views of Iranians by other nations. The graphic novel, The Complete Persepolis, written by Marjane Satrapi (Satrapi, 2003), conveys many of these events and changes through the eyes of a child growing up in the 1980s in Iran. Satrapi’s main purpose for this book is to describe how the Iranian government was corrupt, causing foreign nations to have a tainted view of all Iranian citizens. The Complete Persepolis does so by presenting major events and changes in a manner that is directed towards audiences that are willing to have an open mind about ethnicity and false stereotypes, and an audience that is young and can relate to the “coming of age” aspect of this novel. By exhibiting a credible first hand account of how Satrapi and many others were affected by the events that took place during the Iranian Revolution, The Complete Persepolis can effectively persuade a reader to eliminate the “Islamic extremist” stereotype that the corrupt Islamic Republic gave all Iranian citizens.

The graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi was written in the graphic medium to appeal to a wider audience. Literary critic, Manuela Constantino, proposes that “the combination of a visual representation and a child’s point of view makes the story easily accessible and therefore attracts a wide range of readers.” (Constantino, 2008: 2) Another plausible reason for Satrapi's choice to do the novel in this medium is the apparent popularity graphic novels enjoyed at the point of the memoir’s publication. Writing the novel graphically, brings the Middle Eastern novel closer to its Western readers. As Constantino wrote; Satrapi emphasizes “the universal qualities of

Marjane Satrapi’s early experiences have helped to form a unique perspective acknowledged throughout Persepolis. Throughout the novel, Satrapi uses graphic images to allow her readers to visualize various dramatic events that she (once) witnessed. Informal diction and simple graphics force her audience to perceive Persepolis from the same child-like perspective the author (once) had. More so, special attention is drawn to contrasting colors as a symbol of (internal) conflict. The clash between black and white graphics represents a much deeper meaning regarding Satrapi’s faith and understanding. Such a symbol of conflict enables the readers to empathize

Amazing, intriguing, and unimaginable are just a few words to describe how I felt about Persepolis while I read this true life story of Marjane Satrapi. This book has helped me to see all the life struggles, good times, and adversities that Marji faced between the ages of nine to thirteen. The Islamic Revolution had such a daunting effect in the Middle East, especially in the county of Iran where Marji and her family resided.

Western culture has often misperceived the east and the way that their society functions. In Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Satrapi uses graphic novels as a way to demonstrate to the western culture how the east has been misrepresented. The use of media helps to depict to the west how their views of the east may have been unfairly formed in the past. The media has only revealed limited knowledge that only shows partial perspectives because it is difficult to get perspectives of the minorities although they are the ones who hold the most truth. In other words the use of graphic novels and a child’s perspective give the west a new idea on how it is that society in the east functions. This style of writing brings the connection between the two

Persepolis The Story of A Childhood is about a girl that has a hard live. Reasons such as challenges, restrictions and the system. This book took place in in Iran during the Revolution and it showed the hardships people had to live with. By reading this graphic novel Persepolis, readers gain an understanding of what life was like in Iran during the Revolution through the perspective of a young girl.

Discuss particular historical events that are imported into the graphic novel, as well as her rebellious phase. Discuss the usage of one or two of these and make an evaluation of their effectiveness-in terms of text and image. In Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi utilizes important Iranian historical events to give us a detailed account of how certain events affected her life throughout the graphic novel. For example, the two main events that hard the largest impact, not only on her, but to the country as well, was the invasion from Iraq and the step down of the Iranian king Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. These two events are connected by time and how they both originated during the time of the revolution.

The main purpose for Satrapi to write this book was to transform the reader into Marji, that is what makes Persepolis so touching and encouraging. The drawing’s make the reader infer about the next stage into Marji’s life, every single illustration represents some form of feeling, or emotion. Satrapi uses various different literary devices in Persepolis such as strong use of diction, creative imagery, uncountable smiles, a lot of foreshadowing, and very strong personification with specific examples. Satrapi’s writing is very straightforward and uncomplicated, this is because it is an autobiography and if it gets confusing, people can make inaccurate predictions and these rumors might spread like fire. Also, Persepolis does have a cliffhanger ending, because it doesn’t thoroughly explain what happened after she went to Paris and how she eventually became an author and wrote this book and what difficulties and tough stages of life did she go through before she wrote this

Satrapi’s graphic memoir, Persepolis focuses hugely on the loss of innocence of Marjane, which she illustrates by using several techniques such as the sizes of figures and the contrast of shades, as well as the of details, or lack thereof she includes in her drawings.

Persepolis is a graphic novel written by Marjane Satrapi. The novel is Satrapi’s memoir about growing in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the second Iran and Iraq war. She tells us the struggles of being a female in Iran. Satrapi shows us her life within the pages of this novel to show us who she really is, where she really comes from, and what her country is really like. She corrects the misconceptions and stereotypes made about her culture from the western world.

Persepolis is structured as a graphic novel because Marjane Satrapi was able to use graphic weight, emanata and the organization of panels, to benefit her story. On the page that I chose to take a deeper analysis of Marji’s uncle Anoosh is allowed his last visit with Marji before he is sent to execution. Marji goes to visit him, and they both know that he is being put to death but Anoosh is the only one who speaks and tries to tell Marji that it's going to be okay because he was fighting for something that he really believed in. Satrapi’s choice to write this book as a graphic novel proves to be very beneficial especially on this page.