Marjane Satrapi Case

Final Paper

​​In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi depicts her childhood in a series of cartoons from her point of view. Though she claims that she was never really a child, referring to her mature mindset in the novel, there are plenty of times where child-like humor is clearly incorporated. For example, she explores the heartbreak of realizing her first crush but only after it is too late and the little boy's family has already decided to move to America. Cartoon panels after this occasion depict her exaggerating the grieving process in a very dramatic, yet relatable, humorous way. For every chapter, Satrapi would focus on different aspects of the revolution, whether it be her confusion, her eagerness to create her own revolution, or simply her reactions to the actions of others during the revolution, which allowed to reader to break down and comprehend each tier of emotion that Satrapi felt as a child.

​Through this level like outline, Satrapi achieves maturation during the novel and the readers can easily grow and comprehend as Satrapi did at the time. Again, though she claimed to have never been a real child, the tone throughout the novel remains extremely conversational and easy to understand. The tone very much indicated that a child was indeed relaying her own emotions and memories rather than an adult simply explaining in retrospect. For this reason, Persepolis was an extremely engaging novel to read. Since every reader, for the most part, has already experienced being the age that Satrapi was, it was very easy to relate to the some of the emotional crises that she endured, or otherwise laugh at the nature of this young child. For example, though her mother's friend's family came to live with them out of fear and because their own home had been bombed, Satrapi and the two young boys still cannot help but to enjoy a little bathroom humor and laugh at the word "farts".

​For my final analytical reflection, I choose to re-create a chapter from Marjane Satrapi's, Persepolis. She created this comic like novel as a visual representation of her childhood during the Islamic Revolution. So, as someone who also enjoys releasing creative energy in the form of drawing, I decided to re-create a chapter without changing much content and instead focusing how I would have drawn the images myself. Because I was able to give my own artistic take on the chapter, I was able to make a more in depth connection with this particular chapter because as I drew, I could use the extra time of effort of comprehension. I chose to do this novel mainly because reading this story was so easy and fun simply because of the visuals that came along with it. Instead of having to picture in your head what the physical facial reactions of characters were, it was presented right in front of you. Situational humor was also more easily incorporated simply because there was no need