TOW #20- Book: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis is about a girl growing up in war-torn Iran. This auto-biographical memoir begins with a short history of Iran, first occupied with Indo-European nomads. Satrapi's main point in the begining of the book is to highlight and show that Iran is not a nation of fundamentalists and terrorist, like many Americans and other nation believe. Satrapi notes that since 1979, Iran has largely been discussed “in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism.” She says that as a person who has lived half her life in Iran, she knows that this characterization is not true. This, she says, is why she wrote Persepolis. She believes “that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists.” Persepolis begins with a school picture of Marjane in 1980. She is ten years old and wearing a veil. In the picture, she is with a group of other girls, all with dour faces. She is on the far left of the picture and is partly left out of the frame so that she is only partially visible. She says that in 1980, it becomes obligatory for girls to wear the veil at school. The girls do not like this and do not understand why they have to wear it. They complain that it is too hot and some take them off and play with them, jumping rope and throwing them away. Other children playfully mimic scenes from the Revolution. This vivid imagery is used to depict an idea of what Iran was like through Satrapi's eyes. Not the Iran that is talked about today in politics and on the news. She uses her age as a guideline for Iran. As she grows older, Iran becomes more extremist and religious. This allows her to juxtapose her child-like innocence with the harsh regime that later takes place in the book.