Title of the text for analysis: Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi 2000

Part of the course to which the task refers:Part 3: Literature – text and context

My critical response will:

• show how Marjane Satrapi grew up under oppression during the Islamic Revolution in Iran,
• show how secularists, like Satrapi’s parents, also suffered and made sacrifices during this period,
• show how others, such as nationalists and even Muslims, were tortured, executed and locked up,
• demonstrate how the Marjane Satrapi uses various conventions of the graphic novel to achieve these ends.

From the first page of the graphic novel the author explores the theme of growing up under oppression. She introduces herself and the troubles of the Islamic revolution through the symbol of the veil. The first frame of the first page presents a portrait of Marjane Satrapi wearing the veil, looking expressionless and without identity. The caption reads, ‘This is me when I was ten years old. This was in 1980’ (p. 3). The text and image could not be simpler or more to the truth. The reader hears the voice of the author, looking back on her childhood, showing us a picture of herself, veiled and depressed. In the next frame, you cannot tell Marjane from the others in her ‘class photo’, as they are all covered and depressed. Through cartooning, the author is able to exaggerate these features and simplify complicated matters. Furthermore the graphic novel allows her to explore this theme further in the splash at the bottom of page 3, where the reader sees many children on the playground, jumping rope with several veils tied together, using the veil as a ‘monster’ mask, and taking off the veil because it is too hot. One veiled ten-year-old chokes an unveiled ten-year-old and says ‘execution in the name of freedom.’ From this point, the reader knows that Satrapi is going to juxtapose the innocence of childhood with the seriousness of the Islamic Revolution in order to show how oppressive the Iranian regime was.

In her memoir, Marjane Satrapi continues to explore the theme of oppression. Besides focusing on her own troubles of growing up during the Revolution, she also sheds light on her parent’s struggle with the ruling Islamic Party. She comes to realize that her parents’ beliefs are opposite to those of the regime. While her parents drink alcohol, read intellectual books, have parties and enjoy a wealthy lifestyle, the Guards of the Revolution police this behaviour, execute such secularists and hate any signs of wealth. In one frame Marjane helps her mother pour alcohol down the toilet, as the police threaten to search their apartment (p.110). In another frame, Marjane’s mother puts tape on the windows, as a safeguard against the Iraqi bombings, and black curtains over the windows, to prevent the neighbours from seeing their parties (p.105). She tells this story of her parents living in fear through very stark, black and white drawings, which show the contrast between the evil theocratic regime and her good secular parents. This contrast culminates in the final page of the novel, when her parents send her to Austria to protect the life of their only child from the horrors of war and the dangers of the Islamic regime. In one frame a bearded guard is searching through her suitcase at the airport. In the next frame her mother faints from sorrow as she says goodbye to her daughter (p.153). This scene shows the sacrifices that the elite secularists had to make at the hands of fundamental Muslims.

As one reads this graphic novel, one understands how so many people in Iran, not only Marjane and her secular parents, were systematically silenced. When the Islamic Revolutionists overthrew the Shah in 1979, they imprisoned Persian nationalists and the Shah’s military, including the fighter pilots who were needed during the Iraqi attacks (p.83). This is one of several stories that Satrapi tells of people who were hurt, killed or locked up by the extremists in government. These stories are signs of the times in which she lives, which she can easily tell through voiceovers, jumps between comic frames, dialogue bubbles and iconic images. She depicts how even devout Muslims were oppressed by their own beliefs, as one frame shows a man flogging himself and another frame shows an army of veiled women beating their chests and making chants about martyrs (p.96). Through these devices she is able to give the reader a bird’s eye view of the atrocities that everyone suffered and the frenzy in which society found itself. One starts to feel sorry for the children who brag to each other on the school square about how often they pray each day (p.75).

To conclude, Marjane Satrapi tells how she, her parents and so many others were silenced and oppressed in the 1980s in Iran. The graphic novel, as a medium allows her to depict black and white, stark images that emphasize the conflicts of the times. It makes such atrocities very accessible, and it allows the reader to easily identify with the narrator and main character. For an outsider, Satrapi’s images of Iran and the stories she tells are very shocking, because one’s sees how such injustice can happen in the name of freedom and religion.

(937 words)