Persepolis RA 2

Satrapi's Persepolis makes use of visuals to elaborate her point. Accompanying the text are pictures that Satrapi utilizes to explain emotions and situations that text would be difficult to relay. She uses light-hearted humor to counterbalance the grueling situations that arise throughout the entire graphic novel. Throughout the course of the novel, the Author and main character, Marjane, is subjugated to violence and witnesses the horrors of the Islamic Revolution first hand. A picture that particularly stood out to me, takes place on page 72. During this time all the universities have just been closed. Their thinking behind this was that the education system strayed from religious teachings. They believed that "...everything needs to be revised to ensure that our children are not led astray from the true path of Islam." This upsets Marjane incredibly, as she wants to go to collage and study chemistry. In the next panel she explains that "I wanted to be an educated, liberated woman. And if the pursuit of knowledge meant getting cancer, so be it." This panel image depicts an old Marjane laying on her death bed. She is old and wrinkled what she says (what looks like with what might be her last breath) "It's I who discovered the newest radioactive element." This panel alone is a great incite into the character or Marjane. She appears to always have the highest of ambitions, from when she was a six year old girl, throughout the novel and into adolescence. Her desire to succeed and gain knowledge makes her a unique child, and is well portrayed in this single panel.
In Short, Marjane's use of pictures to depict her story, opens up a new world or story portrayal that we would miss out on otherwise. The text explains and educates, while the pictures describe and show. While I don't agree that many books should be graphic novels, this story wouldn't feel the same if it wasn't. The emotion told though the pictures, gives us the second half to the story that we would be clueless to without.

In the second half of Persepolis, Marjane begins her transformation from a child to an adolescent. The war quickly picks up pace. Maryjane realizes this as she sees the F-14s for the first time while their on their way to bomb Tehran. These realizations start to manifest as the struggles of war quickly affect her town and personal life. Stores go empty, and Marjane's mother starts shopping at gas stations. At school Marjane had to perform rituals and funeral marches, where they lined up twice a day to mourn those who had been lost in the war. A rather grueling prospect was that the boys in Marjane's school were given golden plastic keys. Wartime had brought on instantaneous reforms to education. Boys were now on a new training course, all training to become soldiers. They were given the keys and told that if they died in the war, the key would get them into heaven. 

Marjane takes an interest in the western culture, and her parents are amazing permissive. Not long after Anoos's death the borders are reopened. Marjanes parents head off to Turkey and bring her back a michael jackson pin,a denim jacket, and a poster of Kim Wilde and Iron Maiden. Punk rock was in a way an evil from the west that was "plaguing" the Muslim traditions


The already gruesome war continues to get worse. On July 1982 Marjane and her family go to her aunts. a this point in the war any slightest resistance to the regime was quickly stifled. Wha

Personal Nar. pt 2

     According to Robin Fox, Author of The Kindness of Strangers, oil was not the largest reason for invading the Middle East. In order to increase national security, it was deemed wise to at least plant the seed of liberal democracies in the heart of an otherwise Arab totalitarianism culture. This turned out to be much more of a challenge than first thought.  The Kindness of Strangers gives us several examples of why it would be so hard for the peoples of Iraq and the Middle East to establish such a government.
     The problem in uniting the Iraq people is that many of them are loyal to their own individual "governments." For their entire lives, when their government provided them with little to no resources they turned to their families for help. What continued to evolve out of a lack of organized government, was families sticking together to create paternal based clans. These families would all work for each other invest in each other, and in the case of larger family clans, pay tribute to the "father" of the clan that would distribute the money as he saw fit. There were stories of corrupt Clan leaders that would embezzle their money, abuse their power, and even go to war with other clans, however for the people of Iraq whose roads were paved and farms fertilized by their own family, the prospect of a foreign country trying to create a new government in their homeland, seemed quite unappealing, almost degrading. While these Clans proved for the most part, successful in benefiting the families well-being (for the most part) the Iraq Government does not recognize them as having any political recourse.
     Located in Baghdad are some of the more powerful families. In 2003 A reporter for the New York Times by the name of John Tierney, realized that every week in his Baghdad hotel were weddings in which cousins were marrying cousins and more often than not they were first cousins. They were usually from the same paternal clan as well, however sometimes like in Saddam Hussein's case, it was was a woman from the mothers paternal clan. These families were choosing the "Mafia Solution," keeping the marriage in the family, which is one commonest form of preferred marriage in Arab society.  When the reporter asked why they chose to marry their cousins, they replied "Of course we marry a cousin. What would you have us do, marry a stranger?." The "trust no strangers" mentality is quite common among the Paternal Clans and to a lot of the Iraq people. Knowing this, it makes perfect sense why we met so much resistance establishing our influence in the Middle East.

Work Cited
Fox, Robin. "The Kindness of Strangers" spcoety 44.6 (2007): 164-70. Print

Reader Responce, Persepolis

The graphic novel begins with a brief explanation of the events surrounding the Islamic revolution. Marjane is a 6 year old girl caught in the heart of the revolution. The first chapter is called The Veil because In 1980 a new law passed stating that veils were required at all times in school. Marjane hates this new law.

    Every night she has conversations with God. From this young age she decided she wanted to be a prophet. She feels the suffrage of the poor and the pain in weak and the elderly. When she tells this to her teacher, her teacher become concerned and called her parents in for a talk. Her parents are active demonstrators against the Shah, and Marjane wants nothing more than to join them and their protest.

    Marjane's Parents of course, would never let her go because the protests were so dangerous. Shah soldiers would shoot into the crowds, and they would retaliate by throwing stones. This part of the story (explained by a few panels of simple, black and white pictures) was the part that took me back the most. Marjane wanted only to join her parents in protest, even though they were returning every night battered and bruised from the days demonstration. Its hard to imagine what this would feel like if you were just a young girl to witness your country in such a struggle and your parents working so hard with all the other citizens. I'm sure it would be confusing and extremely hard to understand.

The second chapter tells us about the Rex Cinema Massacre. The Shah was trying to gain support against a group of religious terrorists, however his plan backfired. From the story it seemed like the Rex Cinema was set on fire and police were told not to go in and rescue the victims. This seems like an obvious give away that the Shah had something to do with it (the people evidently thought this too). It reminded me of the 9/11 conspiracy theory. The one that stated that our government staged 9/11 in order to gain national support to move in and secure oil in the Middle East. While I personally don't believe this theory, its a strikingly similar comparison. 

In short I believe the first few chapters of Persepolis are filled with so much information about the Islamic Revolution and the events that coincide, its hard to actually take it all in the first time. The story is in the form of a graphic novel, but the pictures depict an entire, almost separate but parallel story in themselves. Reading though the words is one part, but to truly understand the entirety of the story requires a lot of slow reading along with much slower interpretation of the pictures. Not just the background, but the expressions, banners, signs, and emblems that are littered throughout persepolis.