Persepolis Reflection

In class we read the book Persepolis. This book represents the story of the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war through the eyes of a young girl named Marjane Satrapi. Her youthful innocence was a great contrast to the horrible things going on around her.

This book is very historical as key events are shown throughout the life of this young girl. The first major event discussed in Persepolis was the Iranian revolution. This was significant because it eventually led to the first theocracy in the world. At the time Marji was only nine and didn’t really understand what was going on. She didn’t know the difference between a religious and secular government and went along with the changes the government made.

As she grew older her surroundings changed. Iran and Iraq were now at war. They were destroying each other’s towns and bombing each other’s oil reservoirs. As this was happening Marji was becoming more decadent in a sense that she rebelled against the government and anyone who had authority over her. The reason she did this is because she saw all the terrible things the government was doing. The government sent out young proletariat boys to fight in the war. The government told them they would become martyrs and move on to the next life. The young boys not knowing any better found this to be a veritable reason to fight. As the government committed more of these treacheries Marji became more rebellious. Her life became more clandestine as she did more things against the government. Finally her family couldn’t take it and realized that Marji’s future in Iran looked very grim. Her parents decided to send her to Vienna. The book ends as she is leaving the country.

I think that Marji’s experience in Vienna will be a significant one. She will become very educated and learn about why the war in Iran started and the details of the actual war. I think that she will one day visit Iran again when the war has ended and see her friend and family. The most important thing she will do is record her story and write Persepolis so that many people across the globe can see what she went through.

Overall the book Persepolis was great. It had a great amount of historical context but at the same time was very entertaining. I liked how the book was written and how Marji’s life was shown through an array of artistic pictures. I found it amazing how the pictures and the words combined showed different types of emotion when needed. I think this book can give me key insight when it comes time for me to create my own graphic novel.