Persepolis Response

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic narrative Persepolis critically contemplates the consequences of war and its trauma. She presents the historical events of the Iran-Iraq war, and with that describes the way she and her family were immediately affected by it. It is her simple choice and the act of creating this graphic narrative that makes a critical statement about these historical events. Words can explain, while visuals often have more power to stir; words inform, while visuals describe. When hearing or reading about a historical event through words, the listener will know what happened. However, when visuals are added, a higher level of understanding is triggered. By using the form of the graphic novel, an author can achieve both of these outcomes in one work. One traumatic event in Marjane’s life, depicted on page 142 of Persepolis however, needs no dialogue to clarify the pictures. In this scene Marjane and her mother walk past their neighbor’s just-bombed home, when Marjane sees a piece of jewelry in the rubble of the home. The narration says that “the bracelet was still attached” (Persepolis 142). However, when flipping a few pages back, where the reader first meets Marjane’s neighbor, it is clear who that bracelet belongs to.

The story in Persepolis is one of collective loss in Marjan's family. Not only do Marjan and her family miss each other when Marjan goes to school in Europe, but there is another sense of loss that Marjan feels because she is not suffering from the same experiences that her family is enduring through the war. According to Kimberly Wedeven Segall, collective loss means "that not everyone has a similar experience but, rather, that … stories of violence pass between parents and their children in a way that embeds family groups within a collective bond of loss, distinct from an individual level of traumatic symptoms and personal grief. This loss, with all its intergenerational dynamics, [Segall believes] is part of an unresolved mourning or melancholy” (p. 38). She is separated not only from her direct family, but also from her culture and ultimately her family history. When she lives in Vienna, Marjane tries to assimilate to the European teen-culture by smoking, changing her clothes and hair, and even “manag[ing] to deny [her] nationality” (Persepolis 195). Since she is separated from the social forces that have made her who she is, she feels a sense of isolation and is not being true to who she really is. Marjane forgot her family’s history while in Europe in order to cope with her own experiences of trying to assimilate into a different culture.

Persepolis is a memoir and therefore describes violent events that were especially traumatic to Marjane-those that must have had a great impact on her, growing up. One, for example, is the concept of the boys with plastic keys on necklaces given to them at school. These keys represent their access into heaven. The boys are recruited for the front where “thousands of young kids, promised a better life, exploded on the minefields with their keys around their necks” (Persepolis 102). Marjane Satrapi has the power, through her graphic narrative, to pick which events she finds significant in the defining of the Iran-Iraq war.
Reference:

Segall, Kimberly Wedeven. “Melancholy ties: Intergenerational Loss and Exile in Persepolis.”

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East Vol.28, No.1 (2008): 38-49.