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