Persepolis Social Groups

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.

However, some may argue that the extent to which Satrapi can challenge conventional beliefs about Iran is limited by her perspective. Satrapi writes from the first-person point-of-view and a child’s nonetheless. Those same people might argue that when Satrapi is challenging generalizations by using personal examples she is manipulating fact, confusing them with opinion, and asserting her bias in a persuasive manner. Historically writing of this kind is often discarded for more specific and omniscient information. However, Satrapi never hides from her bias and desire to introduce the West to her version of Iran. In any persuasive writing a bias is implied and one might influence just as to which examples they choose include to support their argument, this essay for example. She may be employing a persuasive tone, but the extent to which she accomplishes her goal is not altered by such beliefs.

The conflict in Persepolis is shown through the changes that are caused between families, women and children when fundamentalist Islamic state takes over Iran. The story progresses though the main character, Marjane’s point of view and experience.

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.

Not cognisant of why the world works around them, the main characters in both Persepolis, and A Long Way Gone play roles as victims, while struggling to be heroes. Themes of Revolution and Rhetoric are primarily present in Persepolis, the story of a childhood girl by Marjane Satrapi. The tale is told from the perspective of a young girl, taking place in Iran, during the Islamic revolution. A Long Way Gone, the gripping story of a child’s journey through hell and back, by Ishmael Beah deeply connects to Persepolis in terms of each story’s message. Coping with each’s individual problems, as well as the problems coinciding with the war, each child at one point feels hopeless. As children, they are not advocates of their battles, feeling as if

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.

Satrapi used the title ‘The Sheep” (62), to symbolize the gatherings of the citizen. The public are like sheep because they are controlled by the Islamic Regime. For example, when Marji believes what the television says “On TV they say that 99.99% of the population voted for the Islamic Republic” (62). Marji listens to the television just like sheep listen and are controlled by their herders. Another example in the graphic memoir is the chapter “The Key” (94) because it symbolizes the government and what they will do to admit children. When the government gave the key to the kids they told them “that if they went to war and were lucky enough to die, this key would get them into heaven” (99). The symbol of the key is unpleasant because it has no value in Iran. The government is using the key to pay for the loss of the boy’s life, proving that the government in Iran is unfair and needs to be

Soon after the revolution, Iran became one bundle of chaos as the country began experiencing internal difficulties with the new republic. Then with the war between Iran and Iraq, violence became Marji’s daily lifestyle. The Iranians were left to themselves to protect their friends and family from the bombings and other types of violence happening in plain sight. Many unfortunate individuals lost their belongings as well as close friends and family. For example, a close friend of Marji’s mother, Mali and her family, lost her and her family’s belongings in a bombing. The family found refuge in Marji’s home until they left Iran for good. They were one of the few families who understood the severity of the violence overwhelming Iran.

In conclusion, Marjane Satrapi uses graphic images to depict a story of how the Islamic religion was seen in the 1980’s. Also, she uses graphic images to show the impact gender roles and social classes had on Iran. Therefore, the book, Persepolis, uses graphic images to give a negative effect on social classes, gender role, and religion in Iran during the

This picture represents an accurate demonstration of Iran’s revolution. In the photo you can see people rebelling by holding up signs and flags, which represents what they think is right. In the book Persepolis Marjane and Marjane’s maid went out, without permission to demonstrate (Satrapi 38). Throughout the whole book of Persepolis there is a Revolution going on that really affects Marjane and her family (Satrapi). People were fighting, danger was everywhere,

Another historical event that we see is the rise and effects of the Islamic regime in Marjane’s life. This event is arguably the central issue that affects Marjane during her upbringing in Iran. Marjane shows how the regime begins to control schools, and how this affects her life by separating her from her friends (4, 3-4). We also see how the regime decides to close universities as they “educate future imperialists.” (73, 1-3) This demonstrates the negative effects that the regime has on society, as they prioritize Islamic values over education. The Islamic leaders portrayal shows them as upset and bored, and are given much different facial expressions than those that Marjane sees as intellectual (such as Uncle Anoosh (54/3) or Marjane’s grandfather (23/8)). This imagery communicates the backwards-thinking of these leaders, and as such, also effectively communicate Marjane’s opinion of the leaders without needing to discuss it with text. Additionally, we see both of Marjane’s views: Marjane not understanding the veiling and separation (3/5) as well as Marjane’s depression over the closing of the universities (73/7). The text here illustrates her opinions on the situations that she experiences, and the imagery allows us to see a visual representation of her basic thoughts and emotions, which are well communicated. A final example of the regime’s changes is the difference between the fundamentalist and modern women

Not only does Satrapi create environments similar to that in which we might have found ourselves in, she aides us in visualizing these scenes through the imagery of the actual events. She uses this strategy to accurately project her desired viewpoint of the Iranian society to her audiences. Marji recounts, “Thousands of kids, promised a better life, exploded on the minefields with their keys around their necks” (102). In the picture that follows, a clear picture is painted into the reader’s mind of the scenario as the children can be seen with their keys still around their necks as they are killed. Many of our society’s youth today are being sent overseas to do battle in war fronts in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Similar to the keys handed to the Iranian youths, our young soldiers are

In The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, the genre choice of the graphic novel vividly portrays the life-experience that Satrapi herself gone through as a youth growing up in Iran back in the 1980s. Satrapi utilizes a unique drawing style to emphasize the influence that the Islamic Republic has brought to her. The recurring action of teachers implanting Islamic values in children throughout Marjane’s education in Iran is demonstrated through a set of related images, which implicitly reflect on the destruction of childhood that is caused by a totalitarian regime. For instance, the teachers force the girls to wear veils on page1 and tells the parents that “either [girls] obey the law, or [they are] expelled” (Satrapi, 98) later on. Also, the background of these images takes place where Iran is involved in both revolution and war; it contributes to children’ miserable situation even more.

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

While Persepolis and her other major works weren’t completed until the 2000s, many years after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Satrapi was still able to bring a form of activism against war to millions. The fact that it was written in comic-form also lends to its effectiveness, as even those with a low reading level could still gain an understand of the message behind it. Not only was the story depicted in the book a form of activism, but the act of writing it was also rebellious. The political landscape during the Iran-Iraq War continued to affect education in Iran, and the things that were going to be offered to Iranian students became less secular and consequently more limited in scope. Marji’s parents decided that they would send her away to France to attend school, in part to get a better education and also to get out of the country that was growing less safe each day, especially for someone who was as unruly as Marji.