What are we fighting for?

Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001? If you ask someone this question, and they are over a certain age they can rattle off to you where they were, what they were doing and how old they were. For example, I was 11 years old and in my 6th grade orchestra class when the World Trade Center was attacked. Did I know or understand what was going on? Not really, but not many people did

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. Paris, France, 2003.

I was around the same age as the author of Persepolis when 9/11 happened. This graphic novel focuses around the author of the graphic novel Marjane Satrapi and her family during the Islamic Revolution. Marji’s actions and feelings early on in the novel concerning the revolution really struck me as familiar. She thought she understood what was happening, and wanted to be apart of the demonstrations, but at the same time she didn’t know the whole situation. How her parents explained things to her was also familiar, since after 9/11 I myself had lots of questions about what was going on because I didn’t understand what was happening. It was familiar because my parents were like Marji’s parents where they didn’t want to lie to us about what was happening in the country at the time, but they also didn’t want to scare us. In Marji’s case since the revolution was so violent and could not be easily explained to a 10-year-old they had to walk a very fine line when it came down to what they did and didn’t share. 

To borrow an idea from another class I’m taking, just because something was written in another country or another time period that doesn’t mean that you can’t find similarities somewhere. Cultures may be different, but the way that people respond emotionally usually doesn’t. This was something I had to remind myself of though, especially when reading the part about Marji’s mother being photographed during one of the demonstrations and then having to hide her face when it was printed in an Iranian magazine. In America if someone had been photographed at a demonstration it would be all over the media, and social media if it is 2019. In our culture that woman would have been hailed and exalted for standing up for what she believed in (by most people, because there is always one) but that is American culture. In Iranian culture the women didn’t and don’t have those type of rights.

If someone feels passionately enough about something, they’re going to want to fight for what they believe in. Sometimes the question needs to be asked though what are you fighting for or against? Satrapi shows this to readers in Persepolis and also shows how different cultures deal with hardships, these hardships are dealt with in similar and different ways. As I said, cultures may be different, but people’s emotional response is usually pretty similar.