CHAPTER 2: SIMPLIFIED SOCIAL REALITY
The magic of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is that, it has the ability to condense a whole country’s tragedy into one poignant funny scene. The novel is an elegant, witty and moving weapon of mass destruction. Marjane Satrapi bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country Iran. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. What makes Satrapi’s novel a masterpiece of the phenomenon of a simplified social reality is that it synchronises both tragedy and humour in a raw, honest and an incredibly illuminating manner. As comics are getting a charge out of a freshly discovered respectability, realistic books can be viewed as "another scholarly frame" as it is an available vernacular structure with mass appeal. Marjane Satrapi is a charismatic woman who is loyal, funny and brutally honest, with a big soul that is visible through her work of art and also can be considered as one of the most original artists working today. It was her way of expressing herself through both writing and drawing. In an interview Marjane cited that “Because creation, you know, it means that you don’t have any salary, you don’t have any retirement, all of that. So if you
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Marji didn’t understand the need to fully cover their heads in a veil and in one incident during the class Marji raised the question, that why would a man be aroused by the two inches of hair that is flowing out of her head and whose morality it actually questions. Her rebellious attitude had often worried her parents but they never stopped her from being her own self as they knew that it was not wrong on her
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.
In Marjane Satrapi’s memoir, Persepolis, the characteristics and qualities of revolution are portrayed through rhetorical devices such as visual text, similes, and pathos. Satrapi’s use of rhetorical devices enhances and supports her expression of the revolution in Iran. Persepolis was Marjane Satrapi’s way of allowing people to see how the revolution in Iran affected her family's lifestyle and her upbringing. This memoir also allows the readers to analyze how war changes the way of the people and government in a country.
Satrapi clearly occupies a different social location than Wheatley. Truly, Satrapi has more self-ownership than a black woman in slavery during the 1700s. Still, having grown up in Tehran and Europe during the Iranian Revolution, she is a marginalized person. One might argue that for Satrapi, the simple act of writing would contribute to “writing against the grain.” However, I think her difference in agency from Wheatley based upon her social location implies that there needs to be more subversive elements in her work for it to be classified as part of this genre. Satrapi’s Persepolis is an example of such a subversive piece, largely due to its nature as a graphic novel. The combination of cartoon image and regular text allows for the portrayal of the complexities of emotions Satrapi experienced as a result of violence, gendered oppression, and racism during a time of political and religious turmoil. As Golnar Nabizadeh writes in Vision and Precarity in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, nuanced feelings “are literally given space for visualization” (154). Satrapi is thus able to explore many levels of emotion and meaning in just one panel, thoroughly developing her experience as a marginalized person and giving voice to many silenced like her in a way that breaks the
Through her devotion to the art and music of the United States, she was able to rebel. The encouragement of the pursuit by her parents created further inspiration for her to use it as a way to protest. Already having a deep devotion to American culture, the ability of Satrapi to use her passion to disobey the regime only strengthen her love. The affection she felt for American culture gave her the courage she needed to stand up to the harsh government of Iran. Despite the risks associated with possessing items from America, Satrapi did so anyway. She was willing to risk serious punishment to pursue happiness through the means of her favorite hobbies. The influence of said entertainments helped shaped Satrapi’s views. By providing her with experiences that were foreign to the majority of her peers, the culture that Satrapi enjoyed influence her open-minded opinions. Listening to the music of artists such as Kim Wilde and Iron Maiden and following the clothing trends like denim jackets and Nikes exposed Satrapi to ideals she normally would not have been growing up in post-revolution Iran. They provided a door into a different, more accepting world and a glimpse into the possibilities of what could
Throughout everyone’s life, they are sure to experience some kind of conflict that dramatically changes their perception of the world. This conflict can be mentally, physically, and emotionally trying, causing the feeling of being lost and alone, unable to control your own life. In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi experiences a conflict of faith that sends her spiraling when her uncle Anoosh is arrested and executed. At the beginning of Persepolis, Marjane wanted to be a prophet, following in the footsteps of others like Jesus and Muhammad.
During our class discussions, the issue of identity in Marjane Satrapi’s novel, Persepolis (2004), became a contentious issue. The question was asked whether Persepolis might be understood to being in-dialogue with western ways of seeing and did the effects of modernization influence the identity of Marjane’s protagonist in Persepolis. How does the novel involve the issue of identity? I will extend the argument and, through the exploration of Marji’s changing ideologies, I will attempt to prove that Marji is caught between the traditional eastern culture and western modernization.
It is tough to comprehend and obey any rule driving people to modify their means of living. In the book Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi there were many variations in the method of existing throughout the Revolution. Persepolis was built on Satrapi’s recollections of her youth through the times when she was a kid. Satrapi describes the problems she had altering her usual habits and getting in trouble for showing herself through the things she enjoyed. It was not only Satrapi who had to deal with situations but other people as well and even the culture as one.
After reading the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. I find that Satrapi's childhood and young adulthood is impacted by living under the oppressive Islamic Regime that rules Iran in many ways. Marjane is finding for her personal identity and individuality for her childhood in Iran. She is testing what she can and cannot get away with. These actions put her in many dangerous situations.
The book I have chosen to do my novel study on is an graphic novel called The Complete Persepolis and the author of this book is Marjane Satrapi and in my opinion the genre of this book is comics and Autobiographical. This graphic novel is autobiographical because the books shows us the events that took place when the author Marjane was a kid and her experiences in Tehran in the 1980s. The main character of this book is a girl named Marjane or Marji for short
When it comes to culture, different views can cause major conflicts, and these said conflicts occur in the novel Persepolis. The book is a memoir about Marjane Satrapi, also known as Marji, growing up in Iran under the Shah’s rule and the Islamic rule. Even with the many different cultures in Iran, she stuck up for what she believed in and rebelled against the things she thought were wrong. In Persepolis, Marjane’s growth is affected by various aspects of culture including religion, government, and social organization.
Tehran is where most of Iran’s artistic community resides and, hopefully, will one day prosper despite the many censorship restrictions regarding who can do what and under which circumstances (Crowder). Many artistic expressions are banned in Iran; expressions such as posters, books, films, women’s clothing as well as music are banned in Iran (Crowder). Navigating these constraints has become an art form in of itself, but Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is not shy about calling out the Islamic regime’s rules that took over power of the country after the 1979 Revolution. Throughout Persepolis, Satrapi blatantly ignores the rule that there should be no representation of one’s faith, criticizes the brutality of the regime as well as questions their power by challenging the regime’s idea of sending thousands of people to die in an attempt to keep control over Iran. Because of these reasons, among others, that Persepolis has been a subject of controversy in Iran and has been banned entirely (Billet).
Introduction My main focus was to find an essay that was filled with errors and grammatical mistakes because they would tend to lack the qualities of a proper technical document. I decided to use an essay I had written in 2011, my sophomore year of high school. I knew that my high school writing abilities were incoherent and had numerous grammar mistakes. For the assignment that I am writing the memo on, I was assigned to read the graphic novel, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, then write an evaluative essay on what external forces affected the main character’s life.
Reflective Statement After finishing Persepolis on my own, I came up with a conclusion that Iran was a nation of terrorism and fundamentalism at that time, which was just an “axis of evil” in contrast with Western countries. The culture in Iran, symbolizing the Eastern part, was also contradicted with that in the West. After the interactive oral, my appreciation to the cultural and contextual considerations of Iran’s identity has been brought to a new level. With a perception of “all the activities Marjane done in Iran and Austria that shaped her identity” in the oral, I suddenly caught the author Satrapi’s message to us: Westerners’ perception of Iran’s identity is a misconception, causing the division of Eastern and Western cultures. Under this message, two new ideas are developed for me.
Marjane Satrapi in her memoir, “The Complete Persepolis” enlightens readers with the reality of living in Iran, as she tells her journey through her life of becoming a woman during the Islamic Revolution. Iran similar to other countries has made different prescribed roles for their women and men based on their cultures religious and traditional set of laws. Society to them was a depiction of what their people were expected to look, and act like when in public. When trying to understand the importance of gender along with their roles in society, it’s crucial to acknowledge outside factors, for instance things like culture and social class. The characters throughout her memoir illustrate how their
Young Marjane Satrapi displays the characteristics that any child might have. She is simple, innocent, and easily influenced. For example, when her parents are demonstrating against the king, Marjane Satrapi says, “As for me, I love the king, he was chosen by God” (Satrapi 19). Her teacher tells her this, and she believes her teacher because Marjane Satrapi is a child and, in all innocence, will believe anything because her teacher, in her eyes, knows everything. Situations such as this show the influence of authority on her as a child because the teacher is an authority who tells Satrapi a misleading fact and Satrapi believes her, or is influenced by her.... ...