The Complete Persepolis: Blog Post #2

How are the Islamic fundamentalists portrayed in the book? How does Marji communicate her internal conflicts and confusion about what's going on?

Islamic fundamentalists are portrayed in the book as scary, very violent men with large black beards in Persepolis. Every event in which an Islamic fundamentalist is involved, something unfortunate happens or a new law is set in stone for the Iranian citizens to follow. For example, on page 73 in panels 1-3, an Islamic fundamentalist on the television announced that all of the universities will close at the end of the month. In panel 3, the fundamentalist looks very unamused and plain, with no features that draw attention to him. On page 74, Marji's mother was verbally attacked by fundamentalists which made her sick for several days. Fundamentalists physically attacked crowds on page 76 during an opposition demonstration with knives and bats.

Marji communicates her internal conflicts and confusion about what's going on through her facial expressions, her actions, and with God. God is depicted in the form of a human in Persepolis and in the chapter titled, "The Sheep", Marji yells at God to leave, which then jump-starts her lack of connection and belief in him. Often, Marji has very intense feelings when dealing with her internal conflicts, usually through crying or yelling. For example, on page 73 in panel 7, Marji cried because she believed that she would never be like Marie Curie. Her determination to participate in the demonstrations despite her internal conflict of being possibly hurt or killed, is seen through the graphic novel when she refused to let her parents leave her at home again on page 76.

The Complete Persepolis: Blog Post #1

My Thoughts and Impressions of the Complete Persepolis

So far, I thought Persepolis was very interesting as I have not been exposed much to Iranian culture or the topic of their revolutionary war. The formatting of a comic book made the story come alive and allowed me as a reader to imagine what really happened during this time period as it may be hard to understand without a visual representation due to a lack of cultural experience. With limited words and simplistic images, Satrapi tells the story in a way that allows the audience to imagine the situation in her exact interpretation of it. She relies more on illustrations in order to tell her story rather than paragraphs of text. By only using white and black color in the comic images, Satrapi conveys the actions during this time period with the black signifying darkness or violence and the white symbolizing goodness. The larger the event, for example, when the Shah leaves Iran, large comic strips were used in order to emphasize the significance, while smaller events have much smaller comic strips. The words and images work together as a few words may only be above the comic strip and the images really tie together Satrapi's thoughts.