American Imperialism In Persepolis

Islam was very corrupt in the 1980’s, and in Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis the reader experiences primary accounts of the events. She uses themes such as imperialism, revolution, nationalism, religion, and social classes in her novel to express herself and prove that graphic novels can be an effective source of literature. Writing Persepolis as a graphic novel really benefits the plot line, the illustrations help explain the complicated themes better than words could. One of the hardest themes to explain through dialogue is imperialism, which is depicted in the political cartoon above (American Imperialism). The picture shows Uncle Sam and other important worldwide figures on the backs of slaves. The artist is representing America and other countries with world power by Uncle Sam and other leaders; the slaves however, represent the poor, defenseless countries. The men riding the slave's backs symbolizes the countries with world power taking up the “white man’s burden”, but really just using them to gain wealth, land, and larger labor forces. Marjane, along with the cartoon artist, never comes out and explains imperialism, yet she manages to get the point across multiple times. For example, on pages 20 and 21 she portrays Britain and Iran as men and shows the Brits taking advantage of Iran in a way that's simpler, yet more in depth than explaining it as a novel would

The picture exhibits a specific event in history when the citizens of Iran rebelled and forced their shah out of office (Abbas). Marjane too, incorporated these exact events in Persepolis, she draws the Shah’s statues and even his effigy being torn down (Persepolis, 41). As well as imperialism, this theme also benefits from Marjane’s sketches. Her entire point of revolution, at this individual part of the novel, is stated in two sentences, the illustrations do all the talking for