Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

1088 Words5 Pages
Persepolis is a graphic novel, written by Marjane Satrapi, giving sneak peeks into the lives of a young girl in the middle of the Islamic Revolution. Situated during the overthrown of the Shah’s regime, and the war with Iraq, Marjane lets the reader experience how the people of Iran, the nationalists, the secularists and even the Muslims, depreciate, excluded and silenced the modernists in Iran during the great Revolution. Written through the eyes of a young ten year old girl, Satrapi helped the readers experience the chaotic Revolution, and how it had affected, oppressed society in different ways. Her book mainly focuses on the idea of her social class, herself, being mistreated, being excluded and silenced by the government. On the first…show more content…
Firstly, we see images of her mother, pictures that were taken by a German journalist. From a young girl’s point of view, we see the admiration she has for her mother, being able to be included in the demonstrations, and having her photos printed on magazines. (p.5) But this was not exactly a good thing in her mother’s eyes, seeing as the next few frame described just how much fear her mother had lived in ‘for a long time’ (p.5) Her mother had died her hair and wore dark glasses outside. (p.5) This had proved just how opposite Satrapi’s mother’s believes are, compared to the regime. The readers understood how shunned the idea of freedom speech is to the lower classed citizens through the text, how her mother had hidden her identity from the police force, how afraid her mother was to be exposed. It was because she knew she didn’t have enough powers against them, and no matter how hard they tried, they will somehow always be beneath the police force. And they believed that it was how their society worked. That they are to voice their thoughts anonymously, that they would be executed for disagreeing with the government. This shows just how the government had silenced its citizens, and even a ten year old girl had known
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