Persepolis Reflective Statement

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.

In the historical context, the image of Iran within Western minds was of “women in chadors and guys with guns” (Goldin, 2004). To Satrapi, this perception was too biased as it simplified Iran’s multi-faced social and political situations. During the discussion, we mentioned the courage of Marjane’s uncle in revolution, Marjane’s parents’ Marxist views, and Iranians’ parties with alcohol, in stark contrast to the public life in which women have to wear veils and hold back from hugging their boyfriends, prohibition of parties, and persecution happening every day. Satrapi’s depiction of Iranians, which juxtaposes the Western image of Iran, highlights the contrast between the public and private spheres of Iranians, differentiating between Iran’s identity and fundamentalism extremists’