Sarah McAllister
Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi
2003/2004
Non-fiction; memoir
Iran / Islam / Islamic Revolution
Summary:
“The Complete Persepolis” tells the story of Marjane Satrapi, a young girl living in the age of the Islamic Revolution. Satrapi, throughout the graphic novel, shows the changes that are imposed on her and her country by the government. Schools are now segregated, women are forced to wear the veils, and Satrapi becomes heavily involved in social and political activism. Her words and actions get Satrapi expelled from school twice, and she faces heavy consequences for being outspoken on her political views. Satrapi’s family sends her to Europe, to a French-speaking school in Austria, where she is later expelled for her words towards one of the nuns running the school. After living in a few different situations, Marjane becomes homeless and later moves back to Iran, where she continues in her social activism. After a few years of living in Iran again, she decides that it is not a place for her, and she moves back to Europe.
Reflection Questions:
“The Complete Persepolis” indicates that Iran has a changing culture, and that the government is actively working to suppress and control the lives of its citizens. By segregating schools, forcing women to wear the veil, forcefully breaking up protests with military support, and bombing major cities, the government has taken away the right of a woman to freely express herself and have a right to education, and taken away the basic right to peace that a person should have while living in their own country. The customs that are generally seen in Iranian culture, such as parties with drinking and music, were banned, and people had to hide their gatherings with friends and family. Women were forced to cover themselves so that they would not be a distraction to males, and this was blamed on the Islamic religion. People were not allowed to be outside past dark, along with other rules. The political culture in Iran is critically unstable during the time, and so it is causing the instability seen socially and between members of a family member.
One parallel that I found between the culture that Marjane Satrapi described during her young life, and the culture that I currently experience is how teens follow new trends, and the constant gatherings between friends and family. Teenages often get new clothes and try to be trendy, fitting in with the new looks and ways of the year, as well as expressing themselves through the music that they choose to listen to and the way that they decorate their rooms, computers, and what they act like around people. Teens in Iran were doing the same thing at the time, except adults were forcing them to comply with something that they did not want, and taking away their means of self-expression by banning the Western things that they were wanting to get and loved. In America, we often have gatherings of people, and these gatherings have drinking, music, talking, and sometimes dancing. This is the same in Iran, up until the time when the government began to ban the gatherings, prohibition was in place, and there was a curfew.
I connected with some of the quotes that Marjane Satrapi has said throughout the novel. The most prominent of these quotes is found on page 178, when Satrapi says this after being kicked out of the boarding school run by nuns: “In every religion, you find the same extremists.” I have found this to be true throughout my life, just within Catholicism. There are Catholics who will shame people for every little thing that does not go with their views. Just like Satrapi, I had an intensely religious teacher. With these teachers, there is no room for negotiation or rebuttal against their views, and it slowly creates an atmosphere of rebelliousness within the faith. Marjane and I both have had issues with our faiths because of this, and have slowly started to become active in the parts that we agree with, and speaking out on what we do not agree with.
The central conflict within the novel is the struggle and the development that Marjane Satrapi goes through during the Islamic Revolution. Marjane gets involved in social activism with her parents and grandmother, but after it becomes too dangerous for her to be seen out in the streets alone or during a demonstration. When her parents decide that she needs to leave the country, Marjane has a difficult time fitting in and staying true to herself and the customs of Iran, and struggles with her identity both physically and with her nationality. The root of Marjane’s conflict is one of an universal basis, as girls often face this within their lives, but so do all immigrants and foreign exchange students, as they are facing a new culture and a new setting of which they need to know the customs and social normalities of the country. Marjane, at the time of all of this, handled this in a way that she thought was best; however, this was not the best way that she could have handled her situation.
This novel educated me as to some of the minor details that occurred during the Islamic and Iranian Revolutions, as Satrapi talks about the difference between the mujahideen of Afghanistan and the Iraqi mujahideen: each of these groups stand for two very different sects of Islam that are taken to a manical degree. The term “mujahideen” is also not exclusively Afghani, and is the word for “combatants.” I also had not known about the forcing of the veil on women, and the terms used to refer to people in lower official rankings. People in positions of authority often call those in the general public “brother” or “sister” as to not offend them when they are speaking. These are things that my Iranian uncle does not often talk about, as he focuses more on the larger details of the conflict that he knows and remembers from when he lived in Iran with his family.
I had a preconceived idea that people had bowed to the will of the new government, a government that they had risen up to put into place over the monarchy. However, this idea changed when I read about how Satrapi’s family and others reacted to the coup of the shaw and the reign of war that began over their country. Instead, they resisted wearing the veil, still held their gatherings, and continued to buy Western goods and indulge in Western culture. They only stopped when it became too dangerous to do these things, which forced them into a semblance of submission to the new culture that was taking over their country.
Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi
2003/2004
Non-fiction; memoir
Iran / Islam / Islamic Revolution
Summary:
“The Complete Persepolis” tells the story of Marjane Satrapi, a young girl living in the age of the Islamic Revolution. Satrapi, throughout the graphic novel, shows the changes that are imposed on her and her country by the government. Schools are now segregated, women are forced to wear the veils, and Satrapi becomes heavily involved in social and political activism. Her words and actions get Satrapi expelled from school twice, and she faces heavy consequences for being outspoken on her political views. Satrapi’s family sends her to Europe, to a French-speaking school in Austria, where she is later expelled for her words towards one of the nuns running the school. After living in a few different situations, Marjane becomes homeless and later moves back to Iran, where she continues in her social activism. After a few years of living in Iran again, she decides that it is not a place for her, and she moves back to Europe.
Reflection Questions:
“The Complete Persepolis” indicates that Iran has a changing culture, and that the government is actively working to suppress and control the lives of its citizens. By segregating schools, forcing women to wear the veil, forcefully breaking up protests with military support, and bombing major cities, the government has taken away the right of a woman to freely express herself and have a right to education, and taken away the basic right to peace that a person should have while living in their own country. The customs that are generally seen in Iranian culture, such as parties with drinking and music, were banned, and people had to hide their gatherings with friends and family. Women were forced to cover themselves so that they would not be a distraction to males, and this was blamed on the Islamic religion. People were not allowed to be outside past dark, along with other rules. The political culture in Iran is critically unstable during the time, and so it is causing the instability seen socially and between members of a family member.
One parallel that I found between the culture that Marjane Satrapi described during her young life, and the culture that I currently experience is how teens follow new trends, and the constant gatherings between friends and family. Teenages often get new clothes and try to be trendy, fitting in with the new looks and ways of the year, as well as expressing themselves through the music that they choose to listen to and the way that they decorate their rooms, computers, and what they act like around people. Teens in Iran were doing the same thing at the time, except adults were forcing them to comply with something that they did not want, and taking away their means of self-expression by banning the Western things that they were wanting to get and loved. In America, we often have gatherings of people, and these gatherings have drinking, music, talking, and sometimes dancing. This is the same in Iran, up until the time when the government began to ban the gatherings, prohibition was in place, and there was a curfew.
I connected with some of the quotes that Marjane Satrapi has said throughout the novel. The most prominent of these quotes is found on page 178, when Satrapi says this after being kicked out of the boarding school run by nuns: “In every religion, you find the same extremists.” I have found this to be true throughout my life, just within Catholicism. There are Catholics who will shame people for every little thing that does not go with their views. Just like Satrapi, I had an intensely religious teacher. With these teachers, there is no room for negotiation or rebuttal against their views, and it slowly creates an atmosphere of rebelliousness within the faith. Marjane and I both have had issues with our faiths because of this, and have slowly started to become active in the parts that we agree with, and speaking out on what we do not agree with.
The central conflict within the novel is the struggle and the development that Marjane Satrapi goes through during the Islamic Revolution. Marjane gets involved in social activism with her parents and grandmother, but after it becomes too dangerous for her to be seen out in the streets alone or during a demonstration. When her parents decide that she needs to leave the country, Marjane has a difficult time fitting in and staying true to herself and the customs of Iran, and struggles with her identity both physically and with her nationality. The root of Marjane’s conflict is one of an universal basis, as girls often face this within their lives, but so do all immigrants and foreign exchange students, as they are facing a new culture and a new setting of which they need to know the customs and social normalities of the country. Marjane, at the time of all of this, handled this in a way that she thought was best; however, this was not the best way that she could have handled her situation.
This novel educated me as to some of the minor details that occurred during the Islamic and Iranian Revolutions, as Satrapi talks about the difference between the mujahideen of Afghanistan and the Iraqi mujahideen: each of these groups stand for two very different sects of Islam that are taken to a manical degree. The term “mujahideen” is also not exclusively Afghani, and is the word for “combatants.” I also had not known about the forcing of the veil on women, and the terms used to refer to people in lower official rankings. People in positions of authority often call those in the general public “brother” or “sister” as to not offend them when they are speaking. These are things that my Iranian uncle does not often talk about, as he focuses more on the larger details of the conflict that he knows and remembers from when he lived in Iran with his family.
I had a preconceived idea that people had bowed to the will of the new government, a government that they had risen up to put into place over the monarchy. However, this idea changed when I read about how Satrapi’s family and others reacted to the coup of the shaw and the reign of war that began over their country. Instead, they resisted wearing the veil, still held their gatherings, and continued to buy Western goods and indulge in Western culture. They only stopped when it became too dangerous to do these things, which forced them into a semblance of submission to the new culture that was taking over their country.