The Silent Bombs of Iran
Yasamyn Ghafourian
It is often said people utilized literature as a form of freedom of expression especially when they have been oppressed and silenced. People were systematically silenced for having different ideologies than the new government. After the Iranian revolution, the government utilized Islamic religion to influence the changes of the new system. They restricted all the medias that did not have their same beliefs, and the freedom of speech was no longer available. As well, the education system was changed to persuade the new generation. Satrapi gave a voice to all the Iranians that were silenced after the revolution by writing this graphic novel Persepolis.
Women struggled to find their identities, particularly when the law of wearing the veil was brought into Iran. She details her experiences as a young girl during this oppression and looks back on her childhood by introducing her class picture at the age of 10 with title “The Veil”. All the children were illustrated with similar resemblances and could not be individually identified. The playground was portrayed as bleak, dark, and sad as the children were forced to wear veils. The veil took away the innocence and happiness of the children. Satrapi uses hyperbolism to show the reader that the veil prevented young girls and women to have any self-expression making all females identical. Women including Marjane’s mother went to demonstrations to fight against wearing the veil; it was not because they wanted to show their hair but to fight for their own freedom that was taken away from them. In the splash, (p.5) it portraits on the left side women covered up with veils repeating “the veil!” whereas on the right side women with their hair exp...
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...s of the government. This key is an especially repulsive symbol because it holds absolutely no value it's just "a plastic key painted gold" (p.34). Blood transfusions depict the extremists destroying society brick by brick; painting graffiti of martyrs, and reaping away many civil rights.
Overall, Satrapi's writing is as clean and bold as her drawings. She chooses her words carefully, neglecting flowery language to express her memories as a child after the revolution and her ways she adapted in this new country. She specifically named chapters wisely to foreshadow what would happen and gave significance to each title. She noticed at a young age all the injustice that occurred around her and how it was dealt within the people of Iran. She was brought up as an outspoken person and her parents feared she would be imprisoned for not silencing like most of the society.
In the novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Satrapi’s childhood was highly impacted by American culture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the affect American culture had on how Satrapi viewed the Iranian Revolution.
Persepolis is a inspirational story written by Marjane Satrapi in the perspective of a young girl’s life during a powerful, historical moment in Iran. The Islamic Revolution was a life-changing moment that impacted her view on the world around her and her innocence shaping her into the woman she is today. Not many people understand what it feels like to feel pain, hurt and abandonment as a child from major and minor things. The author writes this story and decides for it to be a graphic novel to allow the not only young readers, but also for those who do not understand what happens everyday in the world they live in. Satrapi uses all rhetorical stances, ethos, pathos, and logos to show problems, purpose and emotions.
Historical context is the main reason Persepolis was written. Marjane Satrapi wrote Persepolis one year after nine eleven. The main reason Persepolis was written is to paint the people of Iran in a different light. At the time many people associated Iran with terrorism. Satrapi was able to depict the everyday people of Iran. Most people in Iran are average law abiding citizens. Unfortunately, like every other country Irian has the few people of deviant nature that commit unthinkable acts. The media has focused on these deviant individuals and consequently depicted the Iranian people as whole in this negative light.
In the chapter “The Veil,” Satrapi’s graphic novel displays a connection with advertisements; that being a theme of oppression toward women. In the chapter “The Veil,” Satrapi introduces her readers to her life in 1980. A frame from “The Veil,” Satrapi includes a caption and image that 1980 was the year when wearing the veil became enforced by the law (681). The frame prior to the enforcement of the veil explains that the reason behind this law is due to ‘The Islamic Revolution’ (681). With these two frames, readers see that new laws such as the veil were enforced due to “religious” reasons because the government. Having men in government enforce such laws on women demonstrates the control they are attempting to gain. Women face oppression in advertisements similarly by society telling women how they are seen and how they should look. The types of advertisements that target women this way are sexual advertisements. An example of an advertisement oppressing a woman is displayed in Dolce & Gabbana. Dolce & Gabbana created an adver...
If I took the text and images as separate elements, I might not have realized the levels of emotional Satrapi portrays or the significance of the larger context of the Iranian Revolution. It is only after reading several graphic narratives that I have realized the multitude of elements that must be acknowledged and understood while reading such texts. This mixture of unique image and text creates a versatile platform that can be an expressive form of art for marginalized persons who feel that they are trapped by the normative literary cannon. As Michael Pagliaro argues in Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words?, graphic novels are useful as people from different backgrounds “can find their experiences authentically and respectfully portrayed” (35). I would further contend that people who occupy privileged positions can also, through graphic narratives, understand representations of marginalized persons who may appear separate or unlike them, as I was able to through Persepolis. Thus, graphic narratives foster a form of expression and understanding that is prime for working to debunk stereotypes, exploring authentic diversity in writing, and ultimately “writing against the
Neshat, born in 1957, came from a culture where a person was free to express themselves until an Islamic overthrow, “Returning for a visit to Iran in 1990 after a twelve-year absence, Neshat was stunned by the magnitude of change. Women everywhere now wore the head-to-toe black chador, the version of veiling characteristic of Iran, which had been abolished in 1936” (Neshat 153). No longer did women have the freedom to do as they pleased, everything is dictated by the government. Shirin Neshat is shown wearing a chador and the writing on her face, while holding a gun. The work is called “Rebellious Silence.” Now the woman must wear chador, and do as the government says, but the gun represents that she is rebelling from the culture and wants things to be restore to the former, and reinstate the freedom that the she once had in Iran. That the women will no longer be subjected to wearing what the
In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s childhood experiences allow her to demonstrate the cultural changes that occurred in post-revolutionary Iran, as well as those perpetrated by western culture. In Persepolis, western culture plays a major role in the author’s attempt to dispel the
In Reading Lolita in Tehran, the author tried to escape and to create their own little pockets of freedom. As quoted by the author “This class was the color of my dreams. It entailed an active withdrawal from a reality that had turned hostile” (P.11). And like Lolita, they took every opportunity to display their repealing and expressing their freedom by showing a little hair from under their scarves, implying a little color into the dull uniformity of their appearances, polishing their nails, falling in love, and listening to forbidden
In the graphic novel, Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, Satrapi’s childhood was highly impacted by American culture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of American culture on Satrapi’s view of the Iranian Revolution.
Unbeknownst to some people, a graphic novel can be a very powerful vehicle for communicating a message of great seriousness and importance. In France in 2003, the Iranian-born writer and illustrator, Marjane Satrapi, published her internationally acclaimed autobiographical comic, “Persepolis.” The novel chronicles her childhood in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that were overshadowed by the displacement of the Shah’s regime, the Islamic Revolution, and war with Iraq. The French contemporary graphic novel explores, from Satrapi’s standpoint, the ways in which Iranian politics of that time disrupted everyday-life and instigated a time of tribulation and suppression for the people of Iran. By using a minimal amount of text in a black-and-white comic-strip format, she is forcing the reader to contemplate more than just the detrimental effects that her country’s troubled past and present has had on her childhood and the people of Iran. She wants the reader to assess the nature of the novel’s format and how it contributes to her depiction of Iran’s ever changing political landscape. The black-and-white comic strip illustrations signifies the void and lifelessness left by the Islamic regimes that enforced strict cultural rules to control and restrain the people.
Due to the serious tensions looming in the air, many people would think it is strictly forbidden to laugh a little or have fun in Iran. The constant political instability makes it seem like the citizens live like robots under extreme oppression. However, in Marjane Satrapi’s biography, Persepolis, she gives an inside look at her experiences growing up in Iran and adds comic relief throughout the novel. As the main character, Marjane, evolves from an innocent girl into a mature woman, Satrapi adds bits of comic relief to highlight her typical personality while living in the midst of an oppressive society.
In history, women had stood behind men as companions or supporters. Women were treated as if they were politically and socially inferior. They were seen as men’s property. In the last hundred years, women’s rights in Iran or the Middle East had always been a controversial issue. In the book Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, women played an essential role in the society. Throughout the book, Marjane showed how the Iranian Revolution had affected women and how the women around her changed her life. The book displayed the vital role women around Marjane have in developing her character and becoming the woman she is today in the Iran strictly feminine society.
The religion of Islam was imposed upon Iranians, whether they liked it or not. Marjane and her classmates “...didn’t like to wear the veil, especially since we didn’t understand why we had to”(Satrapi 3). The young girls were against wearing the veil because they were not practicing
The way they dressed quickly changed as shown when Marji asserted that “In no time, the way people dressed became an ideological sign. There were two kinds of women. The fundamentalist woman [and] the modern woman. There were also two sorts of men. The fundamentalist man [and] the progressive man” (75). Satrapi uses the two frames on page 75 to illustrate the idea associated with the two different ways in which both men and women chose to dress whether it be tradition, or not. Satrapi expounds how their choice of dressing then depicts their view on the Islamic Revolution. She explains how the modern women rebelled by wearing heard scarves, instead of the traditional full veil, along with letting some hair slightly fall out to show opposition against the Iranian regime. She continues with how the progressive man also showed their opposition by tucking their shirts in and shaving their facial hair, in contrast to the fundamentalist man who leaves his shirt hung out, along with a full beard. Satrapi denotes that both genders of characters take the risk of not dressing like a fundamentalist, in order to show their form of rebellion in a settle way, knowing of course that there is always a possibility of
Thus, it is crucial that she effectively communicate this humanness of Iran to the literary audience in America. Since the literary devices in a work are needed to correctly convey a message, she found it necessary to include these and manipulate them in her favor. Satrapi uses the innocence of a child along with morals in her pictures and a relation of cultures to effectively communicate her message. It is necessary to examine how she manipulates such literary devices in order to gain a full understanding of the text. To begin with, Satrapi writes Persepolis from a child’s point of view.