Essay 3, written by Emily Greentree DRAFT The main character in Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, a comic book written and illustrated by Marjane Satrapi, is Marjane while she was growing up with her family during the Islamic Revolution. She is an educated young girl and is raised by a family who fights for freedom in the revolution. Her father, Ebi Satrapi, and her mother, Taji Satrapi, are protecting their daughter while also protecting human rights to defend their culture and land. Iraq bombs are dropping in their lands of Iran and Iran troops are fighting to defend. Her family has friends who are communists and her uncle was in prison for 9 years because he was communist too. Marji reflects on the events around her and shares with the reader about the difficulties of the war and growing up with a regime changing culture. The school demonstrations become violent and she has more reasons to not to be living in Iran any longer. Her parents decide she should live in Austria.
The panel on bottom page 146 has Marjane lying in bed. The frame of the panel is a rectangle that stretches from the entire left side of the page to the right side of the page. The panel’s height is about a third of the page, and looks somewhat similar to the other frames on the page. Above the panel there is a star and the words ‘equivalent to $5.00’ written in the gutter. That phrase does not apply to this frame, it applies to the frame above this one indicating that 500 tumans is 5 dollars. In the midground I see Marji’s face, her bed sheets, her pillow, her thought bubble, and Niloufar is standing next to her. There is no background caption in this panel. The graphic weight of the entire panel is black behind the figures. The figures are white which creates graphic weight contrast against the black background. My eye is drawn to the repeated black stars on her white bed covers and the small black spots on her white dress.
Marjane is astonished because of what her parents have told her in the panels above. She has just become rebellious at school, even becoming expelled from her old school. Marji doesn’t agree with her religion teacher, who was lying to the students about the war. Her mother has just warned her about the unfair event with Niloufar she had met earlier on in the story. She is lying in bed reflecting on what she has seen written in public and how it relates to the events happening to people she has met.
A speech balloon is above Marji and instead of a V shape toward her mouth, there are two circles. Marji is using internal dialogue to explain that Niloufar’s death did not end up contributing to progress in the revolution, her blood did not feed society’s veins and yet she is a martyr. Marji is quoting a slogan that she found written on the walls of her city. The young Niloufar is a communist and that is why they were looking for her and wanting to exile her. Earlier in the book, communists are being killed. Niloufar is not actually physically next to Marjane, however her figure is drawn there next to her bed because Marji is thinking about her. Niloufar has been exiled.
Niloufar is smiling. This can represent her innocence of beliefs. She doesn’t appear to be committing a huge crime and yet she is being murdered. Marji’s head is sticking out of her bed, and her eyes are wide open. She is not sleeping, but wide awake staying up all night and thinking about the realities of the events around her. She is an independent thinker who is influenced by her family and criticism from religious authorities.
Marjane’s perspective of the war is that the war makes her feel sick. One page 116, the panel takes up the space of the entire page. The frame is a thin, black line keeping the image neatly outlined. At the top of the panel there is a bleed where Marji is walking down the stairs of her basement. In the panels before this one, she is walking downstairs and in this panel that illustration bleeds into this panel. Then there are poofs of white smoke clouds below her, followed by dark figures of soldiers fighting each other. In two areas there are zigzagged lines that indicate explosions. A soldier’s legs are sticking out of the explosion, there are also hands and feet scattered about in the air. The fighting is brutal and they are using weapons. Marji is drawn twice in this image, she is shown again at the bottom of the panel. She is extending her arm out to a door. There is a shadow next to the door indicating that she is opening the door.
In this panel Marji is by herself, and is talking out loud. The speech balloon captions next to her mouth have a V connecting to the text. Instead of having an internal monologue like she has had previously in her bedroom, she is having an external monologue. Her external monologue is directed towards the reader, and she is explaining how war became more intense in order to protect the Islamic regime; there are millions of lives taken!
The image below her is illustrations of just that happening; soldiers are killing each other with weapons. She wishes that all of those people did not die. Her sympathy and knowledge is astounding. Her parents want her to continue her French education at any circumstance so they send their daughter to live in Austria. Her parents were very brave and before she had left they had told her they ‘had business to take care of.’ This probably means they will be fighting more in the revolution while she is gone. In the end, Taji faints and falls into the hands of Ebi, after saying good bye to Marji.
On the very last page (153) of the book, in the foreground there is Ebi holding Taji in his arms. This panel is slightly bigger than half of the page it is printed on. The frame is a thin black line, which is how most of the frames layout throughout the book. The background caption is written at the bottom right corner. There is a short sentence in the caption. The whole illustration is quite emotion striking because there is emotion portrayed in each character’s face. Black and white contrasts add shadows as well as highlight the figures. The midground is the guy behind Ebi and Taji who has his eyes wide open, staring at her parents. The lady next to him is also staring at her parents. The midground is Mr. Satrapi’s hands, Mrs. Satrapi’s hand, and Marjane’s hands that are pressed against the glass wall of the airport. Their hands are white and are placed in areas that have black figures behind them, so the reader can see all of their hands quite clearly from the contrast. Their hand placements show what each character is feeling. There are many people in the airport around them walking around. Most of the figures of these people are dark and there is no detail of them. There is a man walking and half of his figure is cut off. It represents a bleed that could indicate that even though the reader is on the last page, the story continues on. There is a second Persepolis book. The war was becoming brutal and Marjane’s parents conclude the best idea for their daughter would be to move her to Austria to continue her education. Marjane uses different kinds of size of panels or different ways to portray speech bubbles coming from character’s mouths to emphasis on certain parts of her story. The detail of the characters faces give emotion to them and gives the reader the indication that this may be the last time that Marjane ever sees her parents. A sad thing is that her parents could die while doing more demonstrations to protect their country of Iran. Marjane illustrates the character’s thoughts in the story which lets the reader in on ‘unsaid’ parts of the story. Mr. and Mrs. Satrapi love their daughter very much, and they also love their country. They want their daughter to be safe and her grandma encourages her to always be true to herself. This story is heartwarming and I would like to read the book that comes after this one.