Cultural Identity In Persepolis

In The Complete Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi seems to struggle at times with being able to belong within a certain culture. Marjane grows up in Iran, but after the regime takes over she struggles to understand the new cultural concepts that have been placed upon them. After living in Austria for a prolonged amount of time she begins picking up aspects of European culture and begins incorporating them into her daily life. Upon returning to Iran, she is unable to return to the current cultural ways of Iran. Marjane cannot fully adapt to either culture and falls in between the two, creating her own unique cultural identity.

Since Marjane originates from Iran, she has Persian heritage and practice some aspects of Persian culture. For example, when

Julie tells Marjane about how she has been sexual active for years and that she uses contraceptives. For Julie to openly talk about her sex life was unheard of where Marjane comes from. Marjane comments that, “I was shocked. In my country, even when you had sex before marriage, you hid it” (Satrapi 182). Marjane is shocked that Julie is so comfortable with openly talking about the subject because it is not one can flaunt in Iran. In Iran sex before marriage was looked down on because in Iranian culture it was best to remain a virgin until marriage. Julie also tends to ignore her mother which baffled Marjane because in her culture, “parents were sacred. We at least owed them an answer. To behave like this toward one’s own mother made me indignant” (180). Despite the culture differences and disagreements Marjane had with Julie’s behavior, Marjane began to assimilate into the Austrian culture. She altered her style of clothing, hairstyle, and makeup to fit the persona of the modern Austrian. In the process of assimilating, she began to lose the link to her Iranian culture to later remember valuable words told to her by her parents and grandmother and partially reverted back to her Iranian cultural