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Point of View in Persepolis

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Reading Persepolis was really different for me, to say the least. Growing up as a Mexican American in America with no type of oppression like Marji and her family endured, it was really hard for me to read it and understand fully. Marji grew up in Iran throughout and after the Islamic Revolution – all things that I can’t begin to comprehend.

We obviously don’t have any extremism or threats of bomb attacks or actual bomb attacks. We have things that worry us or give us anxiety but no real threats like they dealt with. For someone who is so young to be dealing with these things, it just baffles my mind – I know that at my age now, 22, I wouldn’t be able to handle half of what her family went through. With so much different, it was hard for me to understand what she went through, but I could feel the pain from it, nonetheless.

This is the first graphic novel that I’ve read that wasn’t in color. The starkness from the black and white really hit in a different way. It’s only two colors (or one color and one lack-of color) so I didn’t think you could make such an impact with only using that. But the way that Marjane Satrapi uses black to create the background instead of the typical white background creates a whole vibe to the panels. The black background makes it as though the darkness of the whole situation they’re in is engulfing them which is only how I could assume would be how they felt.

The time, place, and people from Persepolis are completely different from what I know to be true today. Obviously, this story is being held during the Islamic Revolution, roughly occurring between 1978-1979, while it’s currently 2019 in America – completely different cultural and social expectations.

I’ve learned a lot from this story. While I say that I wouldn’t be able to handle what they went through, I’m sure that Marji and her family thought the same thing. Pain and hardship have a way of strengthening you when you need to be strong. This whole concept of experiencing a war first-hand and seeing people – your friends – dead because of a government system that you don’t agree with completely baffles me. It really opened me up to understand further people in other war-torn countries such as Iran. Marji realizes that her family has privilege because of their class status; it was interesting for me to read this because most stories are of poorer families so the difference between classes is really interesting.

I don’t know why some of the scenes and panels are familiar and some are foreign. I’m assuming it has something to do with the fact that it’s not a Western graphic novel. But I feel like it’s something more. We’re all humans. No matter what time, place, what kind of people – we are all inherently human. We’ve all dealt with the same fundamental concepts: love, understanding, belonging. The details are just different.

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