In the spirit of my never-ending battle of finishing literary papers for my classes, I’ve decided to again post another one, this time on Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, mainly Book I. While this is categorized loosely as a graphic novel review, it’s not a traditional review and delves both into some recurring themes and relevance to cultural, and since this was for an education prepracticum, the ability to teach the book to classes. Sit back and enjoy, because it’s fairly long for a blog post, and please, let me know how you feel about the book, write-up, or anything at all.
Persepolis, written and drawn by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic novel that deals with Satrapi’s childhood in Tehran, Iran during the early 1980s. Satrapi writes about both her dealings with the Islamic Revolution – where many Iranian people, including her parents, demonstrated against the Shah’s regime and his persecution against people with differing religious views – and the war between Iran and Iraq after the Islamic Revolution. She documents certain events from her life, including her own participation in demonstrations, her rebellion against the restrictions placed on her by the government, and the losses that she faces throughout the war, and ending with Satrapi leaving Iran for Germany without her parents. Persepolis contains many unique views, because Satrapi does not tell the reader her story, but instead shows them, alongside conversations that she had with her family and friends. Satrapi conveys her attitudes and beliefs of her culture, being one who lived in. She describes the encounters that she had during the turbulent times, which act as a new viewpoint to look at when thinking about Iran. By dividing her life into comic strip chapters, rather than just a long narrative, Satrapi has represented the important themes and events in her life in such a way that she follows a chronological order of situations that were very moving and important to who she is as a person. Some of the topics that Satrapi chooses to focus on deal with the enforcement of beliefs and religion, what it means to be a hero, the effects of being a martyr, the importance of one’s own views, the power of a nation and its demonstrations, the coming of age in a divided nation, and the effects of war on society. These are only some of the very deep themes that Satrapi presents in her memoirs. Satrapi’s graphic novel touches on many different academic areas; art, for one, because of Satrapi’s use of a comic style; English, as a study in literature; socio-cultural anthropology, because of Satrapi’s analysis of both her society and Iranian culture and religion; politics, as Satrapi discusses the government of Iran and its revolutions and wars; and also psychology, because Satrapi looks at both her own thoughts, wants, and needs but also those of the people around her.
What is very interesting about Satrapi’s story is her commentary on the traditions and beliefs of her culture. Satrapi does not leave out her nation’s traditions, no matter how extreme or different they are from American culture. It is important that she does this while also juxtaposing them with her own and her parents’ beliefs, because it shows that Satrapi does not necessarily believe that her country is right. She points out that even though her nation’s government enforces the laws of Iran, it does not mean that the people of the society believe in them. Satrapi makes mention of this in her introduction, which is a strong point – one for anyone judging a culture by its government to make note of. She states, “I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists.” Even though Satrapi is writing about events that happened 20 years ago, her point is still relevant today, when many Americans blame all Iraqis for terrorist attacks. In the back of their minds, they realize that they are making a mistake to claim that all Iraqis believe in attacking America, but their emotions get the best of them. In the case of Persepolis, Satrapi uses her differing views on governing laws to point this fact out. For instance, Satrapi’s chapter “Kim Wilde” focuses on her parents’ smuggling rock music and posters across the border for Satrapi; here, the reader sees Satrapi and her parents rebelling against the law, but for a cause that they and many other Iranians believe in. Satrapi makes it a point to show how her family rebelled against society as well. In chapters like “The Letter” and “The Water Cell” depict non-violent protests, and the chapter “The Wine” shows a calm, controlled dance party with alcohol that was protesting both the illegal actions of partying and alcohol. Satrapi is sure to indicate that their protests were not violent, nor were they done for the sake of breaking the law. They were obviously done to express the people’s wants and needs, a right that Americans can relate to. It is important that Satrapi tells this from her point of view as well as the fundamentalists’, because it allows the reader to gauge their own reaction and create a perspective.
Satrapi also makes a deep impact from using both personal and regional history in how she treats death and destruction that happen all around her during the war. To Iran’s history and to people who did not know the war, everyone who died was a martyr for their country. But to Satrapi, who knew many people who were killed either protesting in the Iranian Revolution or who were forced to join in the fighting in the war with Iraq, the people who died will always be remembered because she lived through it and saw first-hand the tragedies that people were faced with. In the chapter “The Heroes,” Satrapi is told of the tortures that imprisoned protesters underwent, and even the death of someone her mother knew. In “The Sheep,” Satrapi’s uncle is taken prisoner and then executed. “The Passport” tells of her uncle Taher who died from a heart attack because he was delayed in receiving a passport for medical treatment. The tale that seems to hit hardest is “The Shabbat,” in which Satrapi’s friend is killed after a missile hits her house. All of these deaths are in the past and are probably not remembered by many, but to Satrapi, these were important deaths that she can never forget – she honors these people, and their memories, by presenting them in her book and telling their stories.
As a reader, the graphics have a few different impacts on me. For one, I feel like the graphics are great visuals that accompany the reading. They really help to accompany the story and never detract from it, and it also allows for Satrapi to tell her memoirs differently. Instead of describing the people and places that she knew, she draws them, and her visuals represent the personality of the individual. In text-based literature, it is sometimes hard to get a feel for physical characteristics and expressions, and body language is important, especially in serious situations. Her visuals also offer both a lightening and heightening of emotion. At times, the cartoons can be rather humorous and detract from the tension. Satrapi uses this to her advantage, refraining from giving the reader an overbearing sense of dread. However, the drawings can also add horror and pain. In text, one might feel a little detached from death or destruction, but with Satrapi’s drawings, the reader is presented with a visual that almost makes the story real again. With this reality comes an attachment, and when Satrapi talks of death, the visuals punctuate her fear, anger, and grief, because they bring an added element to the events. An example that seemed extremely well done in this instance was in “The Dowry,” when Satrapi is leaving the country and her family is at the airport seeing her off. The last panel, of Satrapi looking through the glass as her father carries her fainting mother away, is so strong paired with the line, “It would have been better to just go.” Without the visual, Satrapi would have had to explain what was happening in text and then end with her last line, and by the time, the sequence would not seem to have the same emotional effect as it does drawn. Even though it is a cartoon, it still tears at the reader emotionally.
On the other hand, an argument one could make towards the graphics is that many people like to use their imagination to visualize what is going on in the story. Sometimes readers feel like seeing the story detracts from their own views, and they like the story more when they can imagine it for themselves. In a chapter like “Moscow,” some readers might like to create the story in their heads for themselves. Yet in Satrapi’s case, I feel like her aim was to make her story as true as possible to the real thing, and the ability of giving graphics to create the realism was something that she used to her advantage. Rather than have the audience misinterpret her meaning, she used the drawings as a way of explaining a culture that other cultures might have problems understanding.
A great way, I feel, to use Perspolis in a class lesson would be as a study in non-text-based literature. Many times, English classes tend to only focus on novels and poetry, and never really delve into other forms of writing such as memoirs, non-fiction essays, plays or scripts, and graphic novels. I think that it is important as an English teacher to represent the wide range of reading that is available, not focusing on just one form of literature where it seems like novels are the only relevant pieces of writing. Persepolis does both represent a memoir and a graphic novel.
I also believe that Persepolis could be used to present a different outlook on cultures. It could be used in English or history classes, looking at societies and showing differences between them. One could compare and contrast our culture to Iranian culture, showing students diversity.
Students may find it difficult, at first, to associate their beliefs and feelings with those the novel. They may require some hints from the teacher as to how the student can understand Satrapi’s encounters and relate it to their own. A good way to overcome this might be to provide some historical context on Iranian culture that is not a part of the book – research might be done on the customs of Iran, or one could look at the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq-Iran war and compare it to the war that America is fighting now with Iraq, or with America’s own revolution. To understand how and why Satrapi had drawn and written the book, students could do an activity where they were asked to take a situation from their own lives and put it into comic form. In this way, students would be able to use the same processes that Satrapi did when writing Persepolis. It may make her graphic novel easier to read and more engaging when the students understand the reasons and motives behind the novel. Another way for students to understand the book might be to have each student take a chapter of the book and analyze it for themes and important concepts, using the jigsaw method. Students could either present their findings the small groups, or they could each create a Powerpoint and present it to the entire class, building both their ability to understand text and visuals, but also helping their public speaking skills.
Satrapi’s book is very useful in the classroom because of its diversity and originality. Persepolis has a wide range of emotions and feelings that can create lively discussions in the classroom. It also spices up the classroom learning, creating a new and fresh reading that can provide relief from learning from text-based books.
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