Hello again,

At the beginning of the semester in Arts Studies, we read and discussed the book, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. In this graphic memoir, Marji (a younger version of Satrapi and protagonist in the text) is living in Iran during the Revolution and is telling stories from her life.  I wanted to revisit the book because I find the author uses some very interesting techniques in her illustration. For the most part her panels are laid out two or three in a row in three rows but in certain points of the story Satrapi changes that norm to put larger panels on the page. The question I pose in this blog is, what is the purpose for using panels that take up the entire page?

The first instance a full page panel is found is on page 42. The page before shows how the Shah was ousted from power. The caption at the very top of the page reads, “The day he left, the country had the biggest celebration of its entire history,” and below is shown a large group of about 30 people, each with a smile on their face and many hands showing peace signs. Every person has a different pattern on their shirt and no two faces look the same. Marji and her family can be found in the bottom left corner of the panel. Satrapi uses a full page to relay the immense size of the event. She wants the audience to know that the celebration was truly the largest the country had ever been apart of and therefore she uses the largest panel she could for it.

The second time the author uses this kind of image is further in the book on page 71. On the top of the panel is written, “And so I was lost, without any bearings… What could be worse than that?” This panel is about how she feels after she has been disconnected from God and she feels alone in the universe. The illustration is almost completely dark with a couple of stars, a planet, and a lone Marji floating out in space. In the bottom right corner is a jagged speech balloon saying, “Marji, run to the basement we’re being bombed!” in bold, capital letters. At the very bottom on the page, the caption says, “it was the beginning of the war.” In this case, Satrapi uses the large panel to signify two different things, how small Marji feels in this moment and the polar extremes between the quiet of space and the force of the bombs. This particular part of the story is when Marji grows up and is no longer a child.

Satrapi uses this device is on page 77 as well. In this panel is an illustration of Marji and her family riding a magic carpet between an Euopean tower, apartment building, and the leaning tower of Pisa. There are images of curls and waves all around them to signify the wind. The caption on the image reads, “In September 1980, my parents abruptly planned a vacation. I think they realizd that soon such things would no longer be possible. And so we went to Italy and Spain for three weeks… It was wonderful.” The fact that this panel is so large is supposed to represent how wonderful the trip was for Marji and how it was the very last time that her and her parents went away together. This is the final time that Marji gets to spend quality time with her parents without the war in the foreground.

Satrapi has many uses of full page panels. The panels are metaphors for extremes in the story and are used in order to show the audience how important the different aspects of the story are. This panels also show a finality in Marji’s life where something comes to and end or the plot drastically changes.