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To Kill A Mockingbird And Persepolis Comparison Essay

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Compare how the composers of To Kill a Mockingbird and Persepolis use characterisation to explore the conflict between personal and public worlds.

Everyone is different, has their own personality and views but it is not an uncommon occurrence when their way of thinking clashes or is challenged with others. Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird (T.K.A.M) and Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, while set in different time periods, explore similar issues of discrimination which are shown through techniques used by the authors.

In both books, Harper Lee and Marjane Satrapi have built their stories around young female protagonists, Scout a hard-headed and impressionable tomboy from T.K.A.M and Marjane from Persepolis. By having the stories be narrated from a child‘s perspective, it allows readers to understand the characters’ unsophisticated and open minds. While living in different settings and having separate values, both Scout and Marjane come across aspects of sexism and misogyny. From a young age, Scout had learnt from her older brother, Jem, that things associating with girls are bad and things associating with boys are good, “Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that's why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.”(Ch.4, Pg.45) When Scout was two, her mother died of a sudden heart attack so she never had any major female influences or role models growing up.

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