Persepolis--Reader Response

Persepolis was an incredibly interesting read. One thing that troubled me was the allusions I didn’t understand because I am not exceedingly familiar with the history of the Middle East.

One thing that was incredibly interesting, to me, was the similarities between the Iranian culture and the American culture. Marji is forced to deal with house bombings, the loss of loved ones, and a continual internal struggle with religion, but she also relieves her stress by singing “We’re the kids in America” (134). Although some of her problems happen to children in America as well, they are amplified by the fact that her country is at war and going through a revolution. Marji goes to parties and wants American pop culture to be part of her life, but also demonstrates against the government as a child, and has to read all about her country at a young age to understand the woes of the world.

Satrapi’s relationship with her mother perplexed me. Her mother is willing to risk imprisonment trying to bring home a poster for her daughter, and yet Marji commits an “act of rebellion against my mother’s dictatorship by smoking the cigarette I’d stolen” (117). As a very non-rebellious child, who has grown up with next to no problems, I find it very difficult to relate to the narrator’s actions. I was able to understand Marji’s anger at others however, I don’t know how she could not be angry at someone who says, “‘He killed communists and communists are evil’”(46) as if killing them for political reasons makes it ok.

Satrapi’s use of graphics also intrigued me. I like that she partially explained her love of comic books by saying, “my favorite was a comic book entitled ‘Dialectic Materialism’” (12). The graphics mainly helped me to add drama with image instead of through literary imagination.

Overall, it felt like Starapi was trying to get us to think twice about what people say. She even seems to second-guess her beloved father when she draws him with a satanic snake around him as he promotes enjoying a “new freedom” (43).

The book didn’t seem to make conclusions, it only made me examine human nature, and helped me to understand the hardships in the Middle East. Satrapi makes the readers hate Western Civilization because Germany uses Iranians as “human guinea pigs” (123), and Modern imperialism shows the British flag under a text saying “tyranny and submisiion” (11).

During discussion I would like to see the class discuss why Satrapi sometimes chose to narrate with a voice bubble and a picture of her talking, and sometimes with a caption. She possibly did this to stress an emotion in the pictures with captions.