Though graphic novels are not recognized as literature by many literary critics, they have the distinction of communicating with pictures in a way that may not be possible with words alone. Themes that would be lost if they were merely sentences on a page are highlighted when set to a graphic novel’s illustration, and graphic novels can connect deeply with the reader through images of war and suffering, such as in the graphic novels Persepolis and Fables.
Marjane Satrapi’s autobiography Persepolis takes place in Tehran, Iran during and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, during which the people of Iran overthrew Mohammad Reza Pah-lavi, known simply as “the Shah.” The Islamic Regime was founded in its wake, and Marjane spent her early adolescence living under the threat of the government and the war with Iraq . This era of Iranian history was filled with discontent, war, strife, and a deep sense of nationalism mixed with fear of punishment for the smallest infraction. In contrast to the historically accurate background of Persepolis, Bill Willingham’s comic Fables features a secret community of fairy tale characters in a New York City neighborhood called “Fabletown,” as well “The Farm” hidden in upstate New York. The first volume (issues 1-5) introduces the main characters and the second volume depicts the Farm Fables rising up against the Fabletown government in a bloody revolution.
While these settings may be superficially different, one realistic and one fantastical, the characters of Fabletown and the post-Revolution residents of Iran share similar fears and doubts about their future and their homeland’s ability to survive its current challenges. The fairy tale creatures, like many post-Revolution Iranians, are refugees in a n...
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...tatus as strong women does not preclude the fact that they are more different than they are the same. At the end of Marjane’s story she has fundamentally changed, and in doing so actively defies the authority of her homeland. In contrast, while Snow White goes through major physical and emo-tional struggles, she remains fundamentally herself. She will continue to uphold the laws of Fa-bletown as she always has, respecting the authority that enables her to keep her community to-gether. While both women are strong and independent, that independence plays out very differ-ently as both their stories evolve.
Works Cited
Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. Trans. L’Association, Paris, France and Anjali Singh. New York: Pantheon Books, n.d. Print.
Willingham, Bill, Lan Medina, and Mark Buckingham. Fables: The Deluxe Edition. New York: Vertigo Comics, 2009. Print.
The super-genre of what collectively can be called ‘comics’ represents a cultural phenomenon which has exploded in the last fifty-plus years onto the public scene. Evolving from newspaper strip comics to superhero stories in paperback periodicals, the world of comics spread further and further into public appeal. With the publication of Art Spiegelman’s Maus, however, comics opened the door onto a world of possibilities. After Maus received high acclaim, despite its academic taboo as a medium, many more historical-commentary graphic novels found their way into the public eye: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen, and a legion of others. Taken together, this new sub-genre of the super-genre provides a personal glimpse into many historically tragic, enlightening, or revolutionary events. These historic-autobiographic stories can effectively introduce people, whether students in a classroom or a curious independent reader searching for truth, to history, because of the format, the popularity of the historical events they encircle, the relatable personal perspective, and the groundbreaking, attention-amassing approval they enjoy.
Due to the serious tensions looming in the air, many people would think it is strictly forbidden to laugh a little or have fun in Iran. The constant political instability makes it seem like the citizens live like robots under extreme oppression. However, in Marjane Satrapi’s biography, Persepolis, she gives an inside look at her experiences growing up in Iran and adds comic relief throughout the novel. As the main character, Marjane, evolves from an innocent girl into a mature woman, Satrapi adds bits of comic relief to highlight her typical personality while living in the midst of an oppressive society.
The graphic essay “Show and Tell” by Scott McCloud is written in the form of a comic book as he explains the importance of words and images, and how to effectively use the two components when creating a comic. “Show and Tell” explains to the reader how creating a successful comic does not occur easily, as numerous components must be used in the right way and amount in order to create a product that is worthwhile to its readers. This insightful graphic essay portrays to the reader how in a comic, words and images can successfully be used in numerous ways if they are kept in balance with one another. Society traditionally believes that in a piece of literature words and images should be kept apart, whereas McCloud opposes this
In the graphic novel, Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, Satrapi’s childhood was highly impacted by American culture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of American culture on Satrapi’s view of the Iranian Revolution.
Persepolis is a coming of age story written by Marjane Satrapi in 20001. Depicting a young girl growing up during the religious revolts in Iran. Throughout the story the main character loses her innocence. The author uses the appeals of genre, ethos, pathos, and logos, historical context, and illustration to depict the loss of innocence in the main character.
During our class discussions, the issue of identity in Marjane Satrapi’s novel, Persepolis (2004), became a contentious issue. The question was asked whether Persepolis might be understood to being in-dialogue with western ways of seeing and did the effects of modernization influence the identity of Marjane’s protagonist in Persepolis. How does the novel involve the issue of identity? I will extend the argument and, through the exploration of Marji’s changing ideologies, I will attempt to prove that Marji is caught between the traditional eastern culture and western modernization.
In spite of pervasive opinions graphic novels are not the same thing as their original novels. There are many dissimilarity between the two such as the length of the texts, the freedom of imagination, and the diction. Admitting that both the graphic and genuine version of a novel is told in a different method, they both tell an identical story. In the resolution of both novels, the objective ultimately gets across in each of the novels granting that it’s told a dissimilar way.
Satrapi, Majjane. “The Veil” & “The Bicycle.” Persepolis. From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader. 2nd ed. Eds. Stuart Green and April Lidinsky. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2012. 681-695. Print.
I will also be showing how fairytales can sometimes have extended meanings and how they can teach quit a lot. I will have also shown how Fairytales can serve cultural functions to explain a society to itself, revealing its own mechanisms and taboos in highly symbolic language, images.
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.
Enderwitz, Susanne. “Shahrazad Is One Of Us: Practical Narrative, Theoretical Discussion, And Feminist Discourse.” Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies 18.2 (2004): 187-200. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
Persepolis, a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, is not a run-of-the-mill comic book. It is written with purpose. Satrapi wrote and illustrated this book to show Americans that their perspective of her home country, Iran, is askew. She believes Americans are too focused on the “fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism” (Satrapi ii), of the nation and that they forget to notice the normality and humanness of it. Since these two perspectives have vast differences, Satrapi wants to change their minds. Thus, it is crucial that she effectively communicate this humanness of Iran to the literary audience in America. Since the literary devices in a work are needed to correctly convey a message, she found it necessary to include these and manipulate them in her favor. Satrapi uses the innocence of a child along with morals in her pictures and a relation of cultures to effectively communicate her message. It is necessary to examine how she manipulates such literary devices in order to gain a full understanding of the text.
Rohrick, Lutz. Introduction. Fairytales and Society: Illusion, Allusion and Paradigm. Ed. R.B. Bottingheimer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. 1-9.
The classic comic book is a polar opposite of the complex nature of poetry. The comic book is designed for the younger reader and possesses a simplistic nature that allows the creator to use visual media combined with short written dialog to tell a story. The pictures in a comic book are an integral part of the makeup of a comic book. The pictures allow the creator to portray the protagonist and antagonist in a way that is common to all readers. This however inhibits the use of imagination by the reader. The pictures are all an artist's interpretations of the actions and settings that make up each scene. When a person reads descriptive text with no pictures, it allows the reader to build a mental picture of each scene that is unique to his/her own personality. The comic book does not allow for this expressiveness in its prefabricated structure.
The below multimodal text is a graphic novel titled ‘Let’s go to the Park’ and uses two key semiotic systems being the visual mode of image and the mode of writing. I have combined the two semiotic systems to engage the reader and create further meaning and connect with the reader on an emotional level. The images used can create a mood and provide greater understanding and meaning across the text. A graphic novel is a multimodal text that combines pictures and words and places them together creatively to tell a story and provide further information and meaning to the reader (Thompson,2008,6).