Using the juxtaposition that comic books enable, Satrapi contributes a process of memory to the subject of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Using the juxtaposition that comic books enable, Satrapi contributes a process of memory to the subject of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Using memories of her childhood, she navigates the subject with a developing girl’s perception and opinion on the situation taking place around her. One very important theme being conveyed in “Persepolis” is trauma. Satrapi takes into account our inability to process the harsh actualities of normalized violence. She understands how in Western society the Middle East has become synonymous with violence, and she effectively conveys to the reader that this is not ok through her writing style. One tool she uses to capture our attention as a reader and not desensitize ourselves to the horrific violence we would see in an actual photo and not be able really to process properly, she presents violence from a child’s point of view, even illustrating gruesome occurrences in a child-like cartoon representation. For example, the image of a man cut to pieces is done in a way you might think a young child would conceptualize the image without really grasping it. I think the affect it has is it enables us to connect more to the Islamic revolution among other things by presenting us with a process of memory through a child’s eyes, written by an experienced adult, that takes us back to our childhood understanding to a certain degree. She facilitates this practice by using comic book form, and narrating from her childhood self, both of which helped me to escape my desensitized view of Middle Eastern conflict. This book is very important, especially in this day and age where the normalcy of violence in the Middle East is a huge part of our ignorance as westerners. We rarely consider it as shocking or horrifying when a wedding is hit by a drone strike and hundreds die as we do when another school shooting claims tens of lives in the state.
I think this book also helps us learn about the process of interpretive communities and collective remembering. My approach to this subject as an American would be hugely flawed in comparison to how I really should have understood it, and that I believe to be in part a result of Islamaphobia. The way we have collectively defined the “War on Terror” in the West says a lot about itself. We no longer seem to consider the suffering of those in the Middle East as significant as our own suffering, and we have defined much of this war as Patriotism, when so much of it was senseless suffering and loss of life which so many of us, certainly myself, have been far removed from. Satrapi’s style in conveying this practice of memory very effectively helped me to understand from a less convoluted standpoint what it meant to be Iranian in this time.