Coming-of-age stories have been box office blow-outs and best sellers since the dawn of time. I expected The Complete Persepolis to simply depict the life of a young girl growing up with the back-drop of Iran in the 1980’s, a tumultuous time to say the least. But Marjane Satrapi went beyond that. She recreated her life. Not just her life in Iran, though that certainly was a major part of her identity, but her life with all the mistakes and triumphs in black-and-white boxes. Satrapi’s greatest weapon in Persepolis is her use of image, simple child-like drawings to mirror the juvenile tone of the story’s beginning. And that’s how the audience is given the first blow: a revolution undressed of the American sugar-coating, and given in it’s true form. Death and destruction through the eyes of a ten-year-old.
Young Marji is not merely a crutch to invoke sympathy in the reader, but a fully developed character from page one. Growing up in a liberal and educated family gives Marji advantages that other young girls and boys did not: attending an international school as a young girl, speaking of anything and everything on her mind, and learning the difference between the ‘truth’ of the government and reality. These all invoke the expected “how difficult it must have been to grow up under that regime!” and, of course, “how absurd that the music I took for granted was bought and sold on the black market!” followed quickly by “but despite all that, she was just like me!. Satrapi could have easily followed this spiel for the remainder of the book and I would still admire her. But when her life took an unexpected turn at fourteen, we are reminded how un-comic-book-like her life really was. At this point in time, and outspoken young girl was not admired for her strong opinions. The police would not hang their head in shame if she told them off for being disrespectful. Living in Iran would not have been safe for Marji or her family. This, more than any other time, is when the book reaches the most crucial point. This isn’t a story about a girl growing up in Iran, it’s the story of a girl who leaves Iran to live on her own only to return to an entirely different country, unaware of all that occurred in her absence.
The relationship between Marji and her parents was striking because of the reversal from the norm. How many teenagers have appalled their parents with eyebrow rings and neck tattoos, when the Satrapi’s had far more freedom than their daughter ever did. Marjane’s ability to still have these rebellions, real rebellions with boyfriends and protests and bad hair cuts, separates her from her childhood friends in Iran. Even with all the freedom of a fresh-faced college student, Marjane for the most part stays on the straight and narrow. Her drug use is primarily linked to her depression and loneliness; her bad relationship is linked to her lack of family ties. It isn’t stated in so many words, but Marji’s resilience is not simply a part of her character, but stems from her religion. Since her proclamation of being the next prophet at age ten, God pops up from time to time in Marji’s life, always at the most crucial moments. Her relationship with God helped her overcome her depression and attempt at suicide. Though she disagrees with the oppressive and sexist laws of her country, she never claims to be anything other than a Muslim. Her ideas of modesty and propriety are based on her faith-she seems to be the true definition of what a ‘modern Muslim’ should be able to be. A respectable and intelligent woman with plenty of moral fiber, just without the virginity.
Marjane’s marriage to Reza seemed anything but a fairy tale from the start. Though atypical in their freedom behind closed doors, the core of the relationship seemed to be star-crossed love in the way of Romeo and Juliet. Unmarried, they were forbidden to be alone together in the eyes of the law. It was dangerous, there were obstacles to overcome-and once those obstacles were removed, the fun was gone. It was stated several times that Marji was allowed to marry Reza to ‘realize her own mistake’. Yes, a child should be able to learn her own mistakes. A young woman living in a far more modern country should be able to figure out her own mistakes. But to dismiss Reza as a mistake doesn’t ring true-Satrapi is reaching, justifying former actions, and the only time she does so. I didn’t expect her to live in an unhappy marriage, I think the marriage itself was the whimsy of a twenty-one-year-old who didn’t listen to her mother. Two polar opposites, however much they loved each other at the time, could not make a house-hold in that kind of environment. In a world where divorce is typically complicated and has dire consequences, a woman doesn’t have the privilege of a Vegas-style wedding.
Satrapi introduces Iran’s history in the same way she learned it, giving it the quaint feeling of an old fairy tale. There are bumbling kings and fearless free thinkers and greedy oil-seeking foreigners-equally rich as any other country’s but rarely told with such lightness. As conflict continues to rage in the Middle East today, it’s easy to focus on the now instead of the then. If American children could learn about Iran in the same way Marji did, perhaps our feelings about a country so different from our own could change for the better.
Source:
Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. Pantheon, 2007.
