Understanding and obeying the law is never easy, especially if you don’t particularly agree with everything the law says. In the book Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, there were many changes in the way of living during the revolution. Satrapi had a difficult time changing her usual ways and she got in trouble a lot for expressing who she was and her opinion. But Satrapi was not the only person or family that faced these problems, many other families had also faced these problems. Marji is the main character in the story and she is Opinionated, independent and rebellious. She is a child when the revolution begins and she wants to know everything about it because she is so young and doesn’t understand what is happening, but as she becomes older she starts to question the methods and rules of the Iran’s government, which eventually starts to get her in trouble at school, for example, the story she disagrees with the teacher and says “You say we don’t have political prisoners anymore. But we’ve gone from 3,000 prisoners under the Shah to 300,000 under your Regime” (Satrapi 144).
This is showing that she has changed from not knowing what the regime is to totally disagree with it and she is not afraid to stand up to teachers or anyone else it also shows a little of her rebellious personality. Even though Marji is maybe the only one in a few to stand up to people who support the Regime she has also sent a message to everyone who has read the story and who heard about her in the story and that theme or message is that everyone deserves freedom. Freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without a hindrance or restraint and Marji demonstrates this perfectly, for example in the story she is acting as if she was one of these revolutionists who wanted to change the world, but not just by talking about it or giving a speech, but by getting up and doing something in the chapter The Bicycle Marji narrates “Today my name is Che Guevara” (Satrapi 10). What she means by this is she wants to do something about the veil and the horrific things happening in the world around her. She just doesn’t want to sit around watching everything happening and have her and her family talk about what’s happening, she wants to make a difference and help people around the world deal with these problems. Another example is in the chapter The letter Marji says “I finally understood why I felt ashamed to sit in my Fathers Cadillac” (Satrapi 33).
What this quote is saying is that she now understands how much freedom she has compared to other families and she felt ashamed because she had everything she ever wanted for most of her life while these children at the age five and four we’re weaving carpets and washing cars. Marji has had it good in life so far always getting everything she wanted to be able to drive in a Cadillac and she finally notices that there are children out there younger than her and they have to work for everything that they have. In the chapter The Letter page 33 panel 4 it is a panel of a young girl weaving a carpet and it shows how the war has started to affect people it also shows that Marji is lucky to have a family like hers because the girl weaving a carpet is only 5 and I am assuming she is going to try tosell the carpet for money since the war has started her parents are probably becoming poor but she is working at such a young age unlike Marji. Marji doesn’t have to work and gets most everything she wants, but when the war began to get worse, her mother started to restrict her abilities to do things and in Panel 6 pages 32 you can see Marji laughing and enjoying herself which just shows she’s had a better life than most.
In conclusion, there were many changes during the time of the revolution. There was no freedom, young boys were fleeing the country in fear of becoming thirteen because they were forbidden to leave the country after that age and women were losing most of their rights and freedom. Education became stricter and the freedom eventually was lost there too, because they separated the boys and girls and forced the women to wear veils than the teachers started teaching the students false information. There were so many changes that too many individuals it became very unfair and the changes also affected families because they were sending their children to a safer and better place so that they could live a better life in freedom.
