In the novel Persepolis, religion is actually the key role of giving the storyline depth. Religion enhances ones understanding of the novel because without the religion the readers would be lost on why the characters have to wear veils or why the children have to be separated by gender. The novel gave the readers background knowledge on how all government decisions are “religion based”. If reading this you must have noticed the quotation marks around religion based, certainly because that is not true. The leader Shah wants everyone to believe that his decisions are religion based so his citizens do not judge him for making a wrong choice since the rules were indeed influenced by him. To back that conclusion up, the textbooks in the children’s …show more content…
schools also said that “Shah was chosen by God” and once he was overthrown and left the country the teacher made each student tear out the page that said such a thing. At that moment Marjane did not know any better and talked to a friend how she thought he was chosen by God. That friend told on her and the teacher punished Marjane by standing in the corner. As a reader when they said that he was chosen by God I believed it because I had no reason not to, I am not an expert on their religion. But why am I explaining the leader? Simply because he was the one that influenced everyone in the country how to live based on religion. The whole society is based on their religion.
How they use manners, who they marry, and how they look and dress a certain way. For example, the maid of Marji’s house, Mehri. She fell in love with a boy across the street and the feelings were mutual until the boy found out Mehri was a maid. As their religion it is only socially okay to marry people in your social class. The wealthy marry the wealthy and the poor marry the poor. That is just how their society and religion works. People are looked down upon for being born in a poor family, and once one is stuck there, there is no getting out. They say you can marry out of the family, but the thing is what wealthy man would want to marry a poor women that is a maid. He himself would be judged for wanting to marry a women from a lower class. This role in religion helps the reader enhance understanding because you feel for the character. You think “what would I do if that was me?” It felt as if it was a heartbreaking love story, but only because of their stubborn religion and how it made people behave.
Leading on how the religion made people behave, the upper class act “royal” and “in charge”. Which for in the United States the wealthy people are just wealthy, they are not controlling unless given that role. Overall the novel based on religion is a key role because we understand how people think and behave. Whether it is about relationships, different social classes or their
leader.
In this particular story, the author’s emotions in Persepolis are not just her own, but also the feelings,emotions, and opinions of her people and their country. Throughout the expressiveness can not only be felt but they can visually be seen. The opinions of the Iranian people is expressive of their emotions which led them to demand that their voices be heard to the point where they cannot be ignored. The demonstrations shown on page five, first frame shows the strong opinions that the people have regarding the addition of veils. Their opinions are filled with so much emotions that it eventually lead them to protest publicly. On one side of the protest were those for the veil and on the other side were those who opposed it. Those against the veil felt as though it took away their freedom and the visual representation of their personality; those for the veil felt as though the veil was a representation of order which to them was what their country needed. The author’s emotions are seen throughout the story on various occasions. The year of the revolution was a very difficult time for Iran; even though she knew very little about the dangers of the revolution, she still very much wanted to be apart of it. After speaking with her parents and being told that she could not participate in it she began very upset and somewhat angry. This made her feel as though God had abandoned her which hurt her little heart very much. Emotions are expressions that are a way to show who people are on a deeper level and different situations present different
Social class in Iran was extremely important because it separated everyone in to different groups. Depending on what group you are in you are seen and treated different from everyone else. Marji’s maid was born into a lower class family and was treated like the lower class people even though since the age of eight she had grown up with a middle class family. Even children in the lower class had to face conflicts everyday, such as how they were going to support their family all by themselves. All women in Iran were treated equally where the veil was concerned. Iranian fundamentalist men would threaten and physically harm any women they saw who wasn’t wearing the veil.
Historical context is the main reason Persepolis was written. Marjane Satrapi wrote Persepolis one year after nine eleven. The main reason Persepolis was written is to paint the people of Iran in a different light. At the time many people associated Iran with terrorism. Satrapi was able to depict the everyday people of Iran. Most people in Iran are average law abiding citizens. Unfortunately, like every other country Irian has the few people of deviant nature that commit unthinkable acts. The media has focused on these deviant individuals and consequently depicted the Iranian people as whole in this negative light.
Education is an important part in the development of young woman’s life. In the novel’s The Complete Persepolis and A Woman’s Story, the culture of the young woman affects the education they receive, allowing for a strong emphasis on self-education, which helps shape the relationship between mother and daughter. In A Woman’s Story education is the key component to social development, while in The Complete Persepolis education is imperative for enlightenment. This social development through education in A Woman’s Story helps establish the importance of self-education between mother and daughter.
Religion can often be seen as a form of security. In most cases, it all depends on what someone’s religion is. Satrapi begins Persepolis by saying she was born with religion, and she wanted to become a prophet. There are many reasons to why she wants to be a prophet: “I wanted to be a prophet… because our maid did not eat with us. Because my father had a Cadillac. And, above all, because my grandmother’s knees always ached” (Satrapi 6). At that time she did not know how to feel about the revolution. Veils had been introduced in schools, and the boys and girls were all being separated. The only information that she had to go off of was the bias opinions of her school or her parents. Religion was something that she knew about and could fall back on. It was like a security blanket. Thus, the role of religion in Persepolis is security.
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 their images as they could through 60,000 words. In order to do that though, their usage of form must be thoughtfully considered and controlled. Marjane Satrapi, author of the graphic memoir The Complete Persepolis, took great pains in the creation of her panels in order to reinforce and emphasize her narrative, much like a novelist utilizes punctuation and paragraph breaks. Through her portrayal of darkness and lightness, Satrapi demonstrates that literary content influences, and is primary to, the form.
When it comes to culture, different views can cause major conflicts, and these said conflicts occur in the novel Persepolis. The book is a memoir about Marjane Satrapi, also known as Marji, growing up in Iran under the Shah’s rule and the Islamic rule. Even with the many different cultures in Iran, she stuck up for what she believed in and rebelled against the things she thought were wrong. In Persepolis, Marjane’s growth is affected by various aspects of culture including religion, government, and social organization.
In fact, the graphic novel opens with Marjane professing the fact that she and her friends did not understand the meaning of the veil newly imposed by the Islamic Republic; they only knew it as a change from the time before, when they did not need to cover their hair. This alerts us to the fact that for a child born into this new rule, the rule will seem perfectly normal, just as not wearing a veil felt normal for Marjane before the Revolution. Children, to such a degree, take their cues about what is normal in the world from the adults around them, and Marjane and her friends throughout Persepolis emulate in reality or imagination the roles of soldiers, torturers, demonstrators, prophets, heroes, and political leaders. Rather than thinking rationally or sophisticatedly about all the different players in this societal moment of crisis, Marjane at first follows or reveres anyone with power and popular
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 her faith and it changes who she is, religion also changed her lifestyle by the government putting religion into the law. Religion is a topic that people label as
Religion is an ever-growing idea that has no set date of origin. Throughout history religion has served as an answer to the questions that man could not resolve. The word religion is derived from the Latin word “religio” meaning restraint in collaboration with the Greek word “relegere” which means to repeat or to read again. Religion is currently defined as an organized system of beliefs and practices revolving around, or leading to, a transcendent spiritual experience. Throughout time, there has yet to be a culture that lacks a religion of some form, whether it is a branch of paganism, a mythological based religion or mono/polytheistic religion. Many religions have been forgotten due to the fact that they were ethnic religions and globalizing religions were fighting to be recognized, annihilating these ancient and ethnic religions. Some of these faiths include: Finnish Paganism, Atenism, Minoan Religion, Mithraism, Manichaeism, Vedism, Zoroastrianism, Asatru, and the Olmec Religion. Religion is an imperative part of our contemporary world but mod...
Marjane Satrapi in her memoir, “The Complete Persepolis” enlightens readers with the reality of living in Iran, as she tells her journey through her life of becoming a woman during the Islamic Revolution. Iran similar to other countries has made different prescribed roles for their women and men based on their cultures religious and traditional set of laws. Society to them was a depiction of what their people were expected to look, and act like when in public. When trying to understand the importance of gender along with their roles in society, it’s crucial to acknowledge outside factors, for instance things like culture and social class. The characters throughout her memoir illustrate how their
In the novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Satrapi’s childhood was highly impacted by American culture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the affect American culture had on how Satrapi viewed the Iranian Revolution.
Throughout the history of Rome, from the monarchy to the late empire, religion had played a great role in it's society and was involved in almost every aspect of the life of the Roman citizen. It was common for each house to have it's own patron god/gods and ,on special occasions, the head of the house would make a sacrifice to the personal gods of the family. Also, great festivals were usually held in honor of certain gods and would include spectacles like chariot races and Gladiatorial fights.
The novel Persepolis, written by Marjane Satrapi, portrays a diverse amount of symbolism throughout the novel which contributes to the protagonist developing into a young women. The main character, Marji Satrapi flourishes at an early age in her life due to the setting of the novel. Satrapi acquires knowledge about different insights of the Iranian government which constitutes her self judgement. Satrapi reckons that the individuals that make up the population of Iran should all support the idea of the government before the ministry of Iran can commence a war. “For a revolution to succeed the entire population must support it" (Satrapi 17). Marji expresses that the revolution will vanish due to many individuals not supporting
Even in our present time we can see how culture principles and characteristic drive can cause conflict. Within a society, an individual does not exist. If an individual does exist, then they are no longer a part of the society causing rebellion. In I and Thou, Buber explains that the self becomes either more disconnected or more unified through its relationships to others. The film Persepolis is an adaption to Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis coming-of-age graphic memoir. It involves a young Muslim girl name Marjane as she comes of age within the environment of the Iranian Revolution. The film explores the actualization of Marjane through allegory to show how she must construct her identity within a foundation of westernization, religion, and gender.