'Persepolis' by Marjane Satrapi

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003. Print

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Return. New York: Pantheon, 2004. Print.

I remember seeing the hostages from the US Embassy in Tehran released from captivity on television.  I was five years old.  For years my perspective of Iran, and Iranians in general, was colored by the version of Iran I saw on the nightly news: the image of a monolithic block of hundreds of Iranians chanting, "Death to Satan!" while burning American flags.  I imagine this is true for many other people.  It was an image that motivated Marjane Satrapi to write -- and draw -- a memoir of the Iran in which she grew up, left, returned, and ultimately left once again.

Cover image of Story of a
Childhood

Persepolis begins with the first volume, The Story of a Childhood.  In it, we meet a 10 year old Satrapi as she's handed a hijab as she walks through the gates of her school, with a command to wear it.  Satrapi wryly observes of herself and her classmates, "We didn't really like to wear the veil, especially since we didn't understand why we had to" (Childhood 3).  The image accompanying her statement shows a playground full of little girls doing everything with their veils, except actually wearing them.  From there, Satrapi takes the reader on a journey through a brief, but informative, history of Iran, ending up in the late 1970s when the Iranian people began to protest against the Shah, who eventually left his role as the ruler of Iran.  Satrapi then shows how little by little Islamic extremists appropriated the revolution itself.  The rest of the book covers how Satrapi and her family struggled against the restrictions placed on them in the Islamic Republic, the restrictions that governed how and what Satrapi was taught in school, what she wore in public, and even the type of music she was allowed to openly purchase.  After witnessing their daughter chafe under the restrictive society, Satrapi's parents make the decision to send her to school in Austria.

Cover image of Story of a
Return

The memoir picks up in the second volume, The Story of a Return, when Satrapi lands in Vienna.  There, she wrestles with the initial language barrier, and then the cultural barrier that drives Satrapi back to Iran once she graduates from the school in Vienna.  The solace she sought in Iran was short-lived.  The restrictions are even tighter than they were when Satrapi went to Austria.  In order to be admitted to a university, she must submit to a religious exam.  She meets a young man, but the restrictions of society mean they are unable to really spend a great deal of unchaperoned time with one another, and their eventual marriage is a disaster from the word go.  Her parents, once more, seeing Satrapi's options in Iran are severely limited, encourage her to leave Iran, but this time for good.

The dual nature of Satrapi and many
other Iranians after the revolution.

One of the overarching themes of the memoir is the ultimate futility of pinning labels on people.  Satrapi and her family are proud of their Persian heritage, and only nominally Muslim.  Yet as Iranians, people outside of Iran often won't look past the hijab on Satrapi, her mother, or gradmother's head, labelling them as devout Muslims, even when they are not.  A beloved family member is viewed as an enemy of the state by the government.  The mullah who administers Satrapi's religious ideology exam for university admittance turns out to be a fair and thoughtful individual, quite at odds with the image of a dour, suppressive religious leader seen on Western television screens.  Satrapi even goes so far as to call him a "true religious man" (Return 130).  Neighbors who hadn't been devout Muslims before the revolution were now publicly even more devout than the Ayatollah Khomeini.  It serves to demonstrate that perception is everything, and our perceptions are often at odds with reality.

Satrapi as a child,
on the right, on the
way to a protest.

The people Satrapi encounters in Vienna are supposedly more enlightened, free from the repressiveness of a religious regime, and yet while Satrapi lives in Vienna, neo-Nazi groups are on the rise.  Markus, Satrapi's boyfriend at the time attempts to placate her by claiming, "culture and education are the lethal weapons against all kinds of fundamentalism" (Return 75).  This statement is particularly distasteful to Satrapi, who came from an educated family and culturally-rich background, and still watched helplessly as fundamentalists took over her country.  Incidents such as this one during Satrapi's time in Vienna only widen the gap between Satrapi and her peers in Vienna.

When she's set adrift in Vienna, Satrapi comments that she's essentially stateless: in Iran she's too Western, but in the West she's too Iranian (Return 118).  Satrapi's identity crisis is a frequent issue of personal contention.  She can't relate to her peers in Vienna, because they have lived an extremely sheltered existence in comparison to Satrapi, who has seen neighbors killed in the Iran-Iraq War and lives in Vienna completely alone, with no support system.  When Satrapi returns to Tehran, her experiences in Vienna have made her foreign to her friends there.  The repressive regime has made her girlfriends' tiny acts of rebellion -- wearing makeup and emulating Western fashions -- into a veritable lifeline.  To Satrapi, coming home after more than four years of isolation, bad relationships, and still worse choices,  even those small acts of rebellion are too exhausting.  Nor can she speak of the worst of her time in Vienna, which pales in comparison to what her friends and family have had to endure in Tehran.

Satrapi's friends... veiled...

... and unveiled.

Satrapi's art class at university
attempting to draw the human
form while hidden in a chador.

Given that the memoir is written by a woman, the veil becomes a source of contention between Satrapi's progressive upbringing and the regime that dictates she wear one upon leaving the house.  Satrapi doesn't delve into the history of the veil in Iran, but there is a long history of Persian women covering their heads (Jelodar, Yusof, and Mahmoodi 66).  The veil itself also became the object of a tug-of-war between the push to modernize Iran when Reza Shah had the Unveiling Act passed in 1936 and more traditional Iranians.  Jelodar, Yusof, and Mahmoodi 67).  The Veiling Act made the veil mandatory in 1983 (Jelodar, Yusof, and Mahmoodi 70).  The veil creates "a feeling of alienation from [Satrapi's] friends and opposite sex at schools... the veil, as a national symbol, separates her in copious ways, including body and mind" (Jelodar, Yusof, and Mahmoodi 71).  Satrapi uses depictions of veiled women to demonstrate the way "the veil became a benchmark with which women are measured.  Those who wear the veil are devoted believers and those who do not are traitors and westoxified" (Jelodar, Yusof, and Mahmoodi 72).  First, she uses a contrasting drawing of a "devout" woman versus a more modern woman.  The devout woman is dressed in full-length garment that covers everything but her face.  The modern woman wears a long-sleeved jacket and a scarf over her head that allows a few illicit strands of hair to peek out.  When Satrapi returns to Tehran from Vienna, she encounters girls who push the boundaries set by the Revolutionary Guards for their scarves and allow the hijab to slip a bit further back, exposing more of their hair.  The veil also acts as a means to keep women so busy questioning if their appearance meets the Revolutionary Guard standards that they are unable to question the loss of their freedoms (Satrapi, Return 148).

The panic experienced when the
Revolutionary Guard discovers
a party.

Satrapi herself has an admittedly mixed view of the hijab.  While she doesn't wish to wear one, she doesn't want to take the choice to wear one away from someone else.  In a op-ed piece in response to the 2004 French law banning hijabs in The Guardian, Satrapi writes, "Forcing women to put a piece of material on their head is an act of violence, and even if you get used to it after a while, the violence of insisting that women must cover their heads in public with a small piece of cloth does not diminish ("Veiled Threat").  She continues, "But I also think that to forbid girls from wearing the veil... is every bit as repressive... young women... should have the freedom to choose... a basic human right that someone can choose what she wears without interference from the state ("Veiled Threat").  To Satrapi it's an ironic situation because as much as she dislikes the veil, she finds herself defending the right to choose to wear one to Western audiences (Constantino 434).

Satrapi's beloved uncle
Anoosh, as he realizes
everything is not all right.

The artwork in Persepolis is expressive without being ornate.  Bold slashes and swirls of black bisect the panels, creating the upsweep of an eyebrow, the folds of a chador, or the silhouetted bodies of young men and boys killed on the front of the Iran-Iraq War.  In an interview with Mother Jones, Satrapi says, "Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write... Images give me possibilities that I don't have with words" (Walt "Never Mind the Mullahs").  The images allow Satrapi to convey her younger self in a way that both adult and teenage audience can recognize. It's not difficult to see how precocious Satrapi was as a child when you see the expression on her ten year old face -- full of confidence and the absolute certainty she is right.  It allows her to show her uncle Anoosh's growing disillusionment with the revolution as he repeatedly says, "Everything will be all right." while his head droops and shoulders hunch in disappointment and defeat (Satrapi, Childhood 65-66).  A panel with no text is enough to demonstrate the urgency of seeking shelter from a bomb attack from Iraq.  You don't need it.  The sight of so many people frantically rushing down flights of stairs says everything (Satrapi, Childhood 103).  A series of panels showing how Satrapi's university art class struggled to draw the human body while swathed in a volumuous chador is at the same time wryly comical, but the waves of frustration emanate from the page (Satrapi, Return).  Two group images of women first show the women in hijabs, then unveiled, and their individuality can be truly appreciated (Satrapi, Return 151).  The former image shows only the faces of the women in Satrapi's circle of female friends, but without much to differentiate them.  The latter image shows them in all their individual glory, different hair colors and styles, sleeveless tops, trousers, skirts, and even -- gasp! -- cleavage.  A three page series of drawings depict the night a private (and furtive) party was discovered by the Revolutionary Guard and a friend died trying to flee pursuit (Satrapi, Return153-155).  There are no words, but again, there is no need.  Satrapi's drawings efficiently and emotionally offer the panic, fear, and misery of the situation.

An instance where Satrapi
breaks the fourth wall.

As a memoir, the graphic novels do their job.  Satrapi takes you on an emotional ride, punctuated by moments of horror, terror, and unbelievable sadness.  As a narrator, she often breaks the "fourth wall" of the graphic novel, sharing a knowing look, a comment, or other aside with the reader.  It's a wink and a nod to the fact that Satrapi is "speaking" to an audience, and includes them on her own feelings and opinions of certain events, even if she isn't directly involved.  The love her family feels for one another is palpable and seeing her grandmother makes me miss my late grandmother more than ever. (They had similar attitudes about patriarchy and personal lives.)  While the novel itself is accessible to a general audience, there are a few concepts, such as dialectic materialism (the foundation of Marxism-Leninism), totalitarianism, communism, socialism, etc. that might be a bit beyond some readers.  That being said, even I had to look up a few things.  For the most part, Satrapi tries very hard not to leave her audience behind.  As someone whose childhood was peppered with images of the Ayatollah Khomeini, which were the stuff of nightmares to a small child, I greatly appreciated the opportunity to learn more about Iran and Iranians beyond the frenzied protests against the Great Satan.

Running to the
basement shelter
during a bomb
attack

Persepolis has recently come under fire in Chicago Public Schools for a handful of scenes, specifically the single scene showing how the government tortured a friend of Satrapi's parents ("ALA Questions" 8).  The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom pointed out the irony of censoring a book that "reflects the totalitarian society [the] book is all about" ("ALA Questions" 8).  In response, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) started a feature column "designed to allay confusion around the content of banned books and to help parents and teachers raise readers" (Jaffe "Using Graphic Novels").  Their column on Persepolis offers different discussion points of the novel; history and civics connections; applications in literature classes; visual literacy; and pairings with other novels and memoirs.  There are links to recommended teacher resources and, for those who need them, relevant Common Core State Standards.

Satrapi's version of people fleeing
Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War.

An updated version called Persepolis 2.0 was published online by two anonymous Iranian artists, that took the disputed 2009 elections into account.  Using Satrapi's artwork, they added new text and a few original drawings to supplement Satrapi's artwork.  They did this with Satrapi's full permission.

Persepolis was also made into an animated film in 2007, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

All images were photographed from Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis: The Story of a Return.

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Works Cited

"ALA Questions Removal of Graphic Novel in Chicago." American Libraries 44.5 (2013): 8-. Education Source. Web. 25 July 2014.

Costantino, Manuela. "Marji: Popular Commix Heroine Breathing Life into the Writing of History." Canadian Review of American Studies 38.3 (2008): 429-47. Academic Search Complete. Web. 25 July 2015.

Jaffe, Meryl. "Using Graphic Novels in Education: Persepolis." CBDLF. 27 June 2013.Web. <http://cbldf.org/2013/06/using-graphic-novels-in-education-persepolis/>.

Jelodar, Esmaeil Zeiny, Noraini MD Yusof, and Khalil Mahmoodi. "Bearers of Culture: Images of Veiling in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis." Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies 19.2 (2013): 65-74. Education Source. Web. 25 July 2014.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Return. New York: Pantheon, 2004. Print.

---. Persepolis: They Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003. Print.

---. "Veiled Threat." The Guardian. 12 December 2003.Web. <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/12/gender.uk>.

Walt, Vivienne. "Never Mind the Mullahs." Mother Jones 33.1 (2008): 74-5. Academic Search Complete. Web. 25 July 2014.