What strikes me the most about Satrapi's Persepolis is Marjane's struggle to remain a human being, an adolescent, as the world around her is literally exploding with the stresses of wartime and oppression. She hears horror stories about torture and execution. She witnesses beatings at demonstrations and loses friends as they flee the country. And these atrocities are all happening at a time when she is still maturing, growing into her own skin, questioning religion and what she's taught by authority figures in and outside of the classroom. I think this juxtaposition is particularly clear in the chapter entitled "The Key."
"The key to paradise was for poor people. Thousands of young kids, promised a better life, exploded on the minefields with their keys around their necks. Meanwhile, I got to go to my first party. Not only did my mom let me go, she also knitted me a sweater full of holes and made me a necklace with chains and nails. Punk rock was in" (102).
An illustration of the silhouettes of children wearing keys around their necks and being blown apart is directly above an illustration of Marjane dancing at a party, hair blown back and arms in the air, in punk fashion. This is the extremity of war. She is trying to be a normal child- experimenting with black market nail polish, jean jackets, and Michael Jackson pins. But, these Western trinkets are a means of escapism and a feeble attempt at rebellion. The reality is that the children of Iran, especially the underprivileged, are being exploited and forced to grapple with adult issues bigger than fashion or cassette tapes.
"It's awful. Every day I see buses full of kids arriving. They come from the poor areas, you can tell...first they convince them that the afterlife is even better than Disneyland, then they put them in a trance with all their songs..." (101).
So, Marjane cuts class, strikes the principal, and takes her first puff. "With this first cigarette, I kissed childhood goodbye" (117). Ultimately, her parents send her to Austria because this is such a dangerous world, and they are attempting to save her childhood, her life, from the disaster that surrounds them all.
Persepolis and its youthful narrator reminded me of a documentary entitled Promises that was released in 2001. The film exposed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the eyes of seven children. The project was also an attempt to cultivate genuine friendships between the children by breaking down the boundaries of prejudice created by earlier generations- having them speak on the telephone and ultimately meet. One scene that stands out in my memory is of two boys describing the daily ride to school and their fear of a bus bombing. Just as Marjane is going through typical coming of age experiences in a not-so-typical, dangerous world, these boys simultaneously talked about their love of soccer and their fear of being killed. In similar documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that I've watched, children traumatized by the daily impact of living under war openly expressed a desire to die and go to Heaven. Their spirits had been obliterated by wrecked homes and starvation.
This is a really good subject to write about! As a reader I felt like I was slowly witnessing the innocence being taken away from Marji and the other children around her. It was a weird transition, where they learned of violence but didn't quite now how to deal with it emotionally. One of the sections that stood out to me was when she first learned about how the prisoners were tortured, and then she and her friends began incorporating torture into their games. On page 54 she describes how "the one who loses will be tortured" with the "mustache-on-fire torture" and "the mouth filled with garbage". It was a strange combination of childhood playfulness and adult violence.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting comment. Satrapi's maintenance of innocence in such a tumultuous environment is somewhat impossible; her smoking of the cigarette is very symbolic in this manner. This type of bildungsroman reminds me of a great deal of literature that stemmed from the Holocaust. Anne Frank's 'The Diary of a Young Girl' is one such Holocaust work that is similar to 'Persepolis' in more ways than one. Although Satrapi is perhaps more immersed in her surrounding environment than Frank, the two accounts both tell of two girls' struggle to rationalize their own natural loss of innocence and the acceleration of that process that is being caused by the enclosing conflict around them. (maybe a blog post on this to come)
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Emily. I think one of the most telling quotes in the novel is "My parents were so shocked...that they forgot to spare me this experience..." (54). I think Marji was lucky to have been able to remain ignorant of the horrible things that were happening in the country for so long. Her parents sheltered her, and because they did she was able to remain innocent enough to play "torture". I think it was really interesting that she had the luxury to remain innocent while poor boys were being handed plastic keys and sent to die, it really shows the class difference in Iran at the time.
ReplyDelete