To Kill A Mockingbird And Persepolis Analysis

To Kill A Mockingbird and Persepolis both provide an intricate exploration into the significant impact of the external world upon an individual's sense of self. Lee's prose novel and Satrapi's graphic novel both, despite their disparate textual forms, offer an intricate portrayal of a dissimilar society and the impressions of its influential ideologies upon an individual. The two texts depict their main characters, Scout and Marji, growing up in their respective 1930's racially segregated Alabama and 1980's post revolutionary Iran, incorporating the discriminatory values of their communities into their own perception of the world. The authors demonstrate the interaction between the personal and public worlds through an investigation of the
As a child, Marji struggles to comprehend the competing idealism of her parent's political persuasion of social equality and the realities of class division. In the chapter “The Letter”, she begins questioning how her father can drive a Cadillac and her family can have a maid while also preaching the virtues of class-consciousness and equality. This was also reflected in Mockingbird through the characterization of Calpurnia. Marji is shocked to find out that Mehri, her maid, cannot be in love with a boy from next door because she is in a lower social class: "But was it her fault that she was born where she was born???" Similar to Lee's novel, Marji's naivety and childlike perception of the world is displayed through the minimal non-flowery language. The author also utilises the questionary mode and a jagged speech bubbles to depict her non-acceptance in the ideology of social classes. The last frame on pg37 depicts Satrapi comforting a crying Mehri. This demonstrates that though society dictates that each person must stay within their own social class, she embraces and love her "sister", highlighting a major moral development
The novel utilises the bildungsroman format to explore how Scout grows from a perspective of childhood innocence to a more mature interpretation, in which she has to incorporate her experiences and knowledge into her perception of the world. In a similar fashion, Persepolis utilises the bildungsroman framework to also emphasise the moral and psychological development of Marjane as she grapples with rigid regulations of her milieu. Throughout the novel, Scout’s gradual development is guided by her patriarchal figure, Atticus’s lessons. Atticus serves as the novel’s raisonneur and the children’s role model, teaching Scout and Jem to adopt the values that will define them as adults. He teaches Scout “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." The use of metaphor in the 2nd statement simplifies the principle in order to allow Scout to understand, further demonstrating the beginning of her development. Scout’s mastery of the skill of empathy shown when she is able to understand Boo Radley's situation, is a key skill of adult life that many of the grownups in Maycomb have yet to master, highlighting her maturity and her developing sense of self and others around