The Complexity of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Essay

A movie-adaptation is the transfer of a written work. The most common form of a movie-adaptation is the use of a novel, such as the book "Persepolis", written by Marjane Satrapi, written as a childhood memoir. The story is about a young Marjane growing up in Iran during the Shah dynasty, Iranian Revolution, and Iran-Iraq war during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Not only did Marjane Satrapi wrote the novel, but she also directed the film about the book. Sadly, the work of a movie-adaptation doesn't always include every details mentioned and sometimes add details not included from the...

In the 1970's a great power struggle began in Iran, leading to a profusion of civil unrest and mass emigration. In 1941 Iranian monarch Reza Shah, was removed from power by the United States and replaced by his son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who Westernized the highly conservative and religious nation. He continued implementing the Westernized laws set by his father, which were known to "discouraged democratic political expression in the public sphere" and condemned Islamic fundamentalism (Khosrokhavar 3). The largely conservative citizens of Iran protested the alterations in multiple movements in response to the westernization, financial failures, and perceived...

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis, makes important strides toward altering how Western audiences perceive Iranian women. Satrapi endeavors to display the intersection of the lives of some Westerners with her life as an Iranian, who spent some time in the West. Satrapi, dissatisfied with representations she saw of Iranian women in France, decided to challenge them. In her words, “From the time I came to France in 1994, I was always telling stories about life in Iran to my friends. We’d see pieces about Iran on television, but they didn’t represent my experience at all. I had to keep saying,...

Journal 1: PersepolisDuring Marjane’s adolescents, I would describe her as “bright”. The reason I chose the word “bright” is because Marjane was far more intelligent at such a young age that most of her peers. Before Marjane was thirteen she read and understood Marxism, she knew a great deal about Iran’s history, and her dream job was to be a prophet who ended all sadness and pain within the world. I think that growing up in a country that was being torn apart by war and living in a family filled with politically literate revolutionaries is what caused Marjane to...

There are many different influences in the world today; a big one that most people in the world face is religion. Religion is an influence that people first encounter during their childhood. They grow and learn to have faith. People’s perspective on religion is affected by their culture, their family and the events they witness during childhood. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is the story of a young girl growing up in Iran, during the Islamic Revolution, and the war with Iraq. Throughout the novel religion develops along with the plot, in good and bad ways. In the story Marji loses...

Persepolis is a graphic memoir of Marjane Satrapi. The book has received multiple accolades and citations for its realistic and well-written script as well as its commitment against totalitarianism. Satrapi writes (and draws) of her life during the war between Iran and Iraq. It has both literal and symbolic meanings hidden among the drawings, as it also shows the hardships she faced in other countries and even, at times, in her home country of Iran. It helps to show the past and somewhat present views of Iranians and others about Iran, it’s leaders, the war, and the corruption of the...

The transition from high school to college can be a difficult experience, but also life changing. It is a time of independence, along with constant questioning. This transition is a coming of age story, just like the novel Persepolis, the story of Marjane’s childhood and growth. Both are about transitioning from a safe haven to an unknown, distant place. Marjane learns to question authority, and form her own opinions through her experiences during the Iranian Revolution. By the time she steps onto that plane to leave her parents behind in country faced with political unrest, she is an independent woman....

Abstract Colonization most assuredly produced altered states of consciousness, in which the fundamental sense of “rightness” was understood to be subjective and culturally constructed, rather than naturally true. In conjunction with this realization came the idea that identity is not something personally owned, but rather, something inscribed upon a body or culture by an agent of power. In this case, identities were projected onto the natives by the imperialists. The colonial enterprise, particularly the European imperialist projects in the east, has forever changed concepts of identity, otherness, and power in both the Occident and the Orient. Both sides were indisputably...

Persepolis 2: The Story of Return is anchored around how Marji is affected by the social injustice that occurred during the Islamic Revolution. Growing up as “a westerner in Iran and an Iranian in the West,” (Satrapi 274) changes and molds her into the young woman she is at the end of her journey. In this second chapter of Satrapis life she moves away from the comfort of Iran and finds a life in Vienna. Marji desires to find her purpose and identity during her brief time here and faces many battles with language barriers, people and herself. Marjis past...

When writing any sort of narrative, be it novel or poem, fiction or non-fiction, scholarly or frivolous, an author must take into account the most effective manner in which to effectively convey the message to their audience. Choosing the wrong form, or method of speaking to the reader, could lead to a drastic misunderstanding of the meaning within an author’s content, or what precisely the author wants to say (Baldick 69). Even though there are quite a bit fewer words in a graphic novel than in the average novel, an author can convey just as much content and meaning through...