Persepolis is a memoir about the Iranian life of Marjane Satrapi in which she talks about her life during the Islamic Revolution through the use of illustrations and photographs. Through the use of this graphic novel, Satrapi is able to represent or portray the struggles and complexities during her young life. By doing this, Marjane is able to capture the attention of the reader so as to make them feel like they are in the position of Marjane. However, this book is centered on the theme of femininity, religion, culture and politics.
In an interview with Annie Tully, Marjane talks about having the advantage of being both the character and the writer. With this, the reader gets to see the perspective of both young Marjane and old Marjane.
However, through this book, we get to see religious, political and cultural changes in the book. We see this in the beginning of the book where Marjane aspires to be the ‘last prophet’ and starts to ‘see’ God, talk to him and have revelations about the next day. By becoming the last prophet as she describes, Marjane aspires to encourage traditional ceremonies, to get their maid to eat with them and to free old people from their pain and sicknesses. Also, we see a turnover when the Islamic young girls wear veils to school under the claim that it is a symbol of the Islamic culture.
As a work of political art, Marjane gets interested in political demonstrations at a young age. However, she is supposed to stay at home and read books about Marx, capitalism, and other political theories.
Furthermore, this book seems to share a fair idea on the issue of class disparities and gender. There is a divide between the rich and the poor in the book. This is evident when the maid falls in love with the neighbor’s son but was forbidden because they were in different social classes. In as much as Marjane did not understand this, this seemed to be dominant in the Iranian society. The presentation of class difference centuries ago seems to have been a boundary for a lot of circumstances in the book. On page 102 of Persepolis, there is a clear/visual representation of the social class (rich and poor). Here there is a reversal of privilege. We see that the poor people are faced down and the rich people are happy as usual with the widest smiles. Also, on this page, there is the ‘key to paradise’ that is supposed to be the breakthrough for poor people to have better lives however the picture representing this idea speaks otherwise.
However, Marjane tends to admire both Western and Islamic women in the book. She talks about how her mother and grandmother both have the spirit of independence and good moral. On the other hand, Marjane talks about men in the book and puts them in the position of being threatening and superior to women. However this is not the representation of all the men in the Islamic culture,
In all, there have been critics who have criticized the work of Marjane saying Persepolis presents only one side of the Islamic culture and also uses the men in her life to represent the whole of Islamic men, which they deem not ‘acceptable’.
Works cited
Tully, Annie. “An Interview with Marjane Satrapi.” Bookslut. Bookslut, Oct. 2014. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.
Satrapi, Marjane, and Marjane Satrapi. The Complete Persepolis. New York: Pantheon Books, 2007. Print.
