Comparing Persepolis And Marjane's The Diary Of Anne Frank

In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi grew up very religeous with very large aspirations and strong political views of her proud country. The then watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution. However, as Marji grows up she sees first hand how the new Iran, ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, is a repressive tyranny on its own. Mari rebels because of the harsh rules on daily life ruled by religion. With Marji dangerously reveling and refusing to remain silent at this injustice, her parents send her to Vienna alone and she is forced to leave the life she knows and start a new one all alone at only thirteen years old and she isn't sure if she'll ever see her family again.

SECTION TWO: THEME The Abandonment of Faith Much of the novel's first half is a recounting of the author's loss of naivety and faith. As a child, Marjane sees herself as a prophet in the line of Zarathustra, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Her imaginary friend is her vision of God as an old man with a long flowing beard. In these scenes from childhood, God encourages Marjane to become a prophet and to stand up for love and justice. As Marjane begins to confront the political and social realities of her world, the reader sees her slowly detaching from her faith. As she hears stories of political imprisonment and torture, she finds that God no longer gives her comfort. As the Islamic regime comes into power, she feels that she cannot defend a faith represented by such fundamentalism. The imprisonment and execution of her Uncle Anoosh causes a break in her faith and she describes herself as lost and alone in the universe.

SECTION THREE: MOTIF Rebellion The strongest and most evident motif that arises from all of these situations in the novel is rebellion. Rebellion is constantly seen, in many different shapes and forms, all throughout this book.One example of this comes from the very beginning of the novel (page 3) when Satrapi discusses how as a result of the Islamic Revolution, in 1980, the females became obligated to wear veils in school. The illustration at the bottom of the page paints a perfect picture of rebellion where you can see the children using their veils as reins and jump ropes, and basically making a mockery of the entire situation. This rebellion against the rules and the veil repeats several times throughout the graphic novel. Another example of rebellion comes later in the novel (page 128) when Marji Satrapi’s parents are trying to bring her something special back into Iran from their trip to Turkey. Before their trip, Satrapi asked for some posters and her parents made sure that they could meet her desires by doing whatever they could to make her happy, even if it meant getting caught by the guards. Here they rebelled and lied to the guard to get home, They did whatever they had to do to make their daughter happy and excited in the hard times that she was going through. Satrapi’s parents rebelled against the rules and lied to the man and customs and it was actually a very touching moment in the novel to me. These two aforementioned examples were only a very small portion of the many instances where rebellion was illustrated throughout Persepolis. The Iranian people tend to follow the more modern path instead of what they are asked to do which is an example of rebellion. Other relatable examples are Satrapi arguing with her parents, the characters having extreme patriotism for their country during the war, and instances where Satrapi got in trouble at school.

SECTION FOUR: CONNECTING TEXT The Diary of Anne Frank In one of my favorite stories I noticed a large similarly between that and Persepolis.

In The Diary of Anne Frank there is both a harsh standard set by a banine ruler forcing a religion apron an entire population, although Aldof Hitler was worse than he Iranian Shah there is still a similarity of growing up in struggle. Living in a world where you can't be who you want to be, growing up and feeling alone, not getting to experience the things that normal children get to experience are some of the many similarities between Anne Frank and Marji Satrapi. Both of these stories are true and written from the main characters perspective. Two adolescent girls learning to adapt and trying to fit in during a country wide revolution. These two characters have a lot in common considering he fact that they have many friends, dreams, and loved ones before the struggle in the story and when conflict arises in these stories the girls want to be somewhere else. Unfortunately, when they get the chance to leave the situation they get separated from their

families.

SECTION FIVE: STYLE In this bildungsroman autobiographical graphic novel Marjane Satrapi the author uses her style of drawing to show emotion felt, ideas/thoughts in characters, and many other details to show various important ideas in the story. The book really does an amazing job at allowing the reader to emotionally connect with the charachters. The small changes in facial expressions, body language, thought bubbles, and even physisical features shows how the main character may depict the other characters. For an example, Anoosh looks very kind, strong, and handsome. This is the way Satrapi sees Anoosh and the fact that this is true and all really happened allows us to get better factual proof and connect with the author on how she felt about people in the novel. In her art you can see thought bubbles that tell exactly what she was feeling at the time. This style of art allows us to connect and understand what it would be like to be Marji Satrapi during this time.

SECTION SIX: CRITIQUE I enjoyed this book very much! I did miss the actually words as opposed to a normal novel. I am a visually person and I like to see exactly how the author depicted the other people and what they thought exactly through the novel instead of normal book where the author leaves you to infer how they felt in certain parts of the book. Here, Satrapi tells you exactly every aspect of her heart and , if me during this traumatic time in her life as an adolescent teen. I would probably give this graphic novel a four out of five stars because it was very good and it really helped me to understand what life must have been like during this time? It also allows Americans to see why Iran and Iraq are the way they are? If I hadn't read the book I would not know why Iranian women have to wear a veil and why most Iranians hate us. This sheds a lot of light on the subject of why life is the way it is in Iran? I am actually glad I have read this because I have learned a great deal from a first hand experience of a child going through a life changing experience. Therefore, I would recommend this book to others because of the experience I feel like I have gained from reading it. Marjane Satrapi does a great job of expressing what she went through and how difficult it must have been to be her.

Four out of five star graphic novel

Post-Reading Analysis: Persepolis
CREATED BY
Cassandra Palmer6 December 2015
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