Marjane Satrapi Analysis

Have you ever taken a look at any other lifestyle besides yours? Well Marjane Satrapi has always lived in Iran, and she is pretty used to her lifestyle. If anything, Marjane is now trying to understand the changes in her lifestyle and why it’s happening. Marjane Satrapi’s understanding of the lifestyle in Iran is affected by three things: imperialism, social classes, and religion. The first photo demonstrates imperialism because the girl playing with the dolls represents a bigger country that is controlling smaller countries (the dolls). The definition of imperialism is “the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.” The dolls have to be controlled
Many lives were lost during this war, which had a big impact on Marjane’s lifestyle. These bad things were happening to innocent people (like Marjane) and the only thing that could be done was for the Iranians to give up their freedom and follow the new rules. Changing the rules, a new country taking over, bombs going who knows where, had a lot of influence and effect on Marjane’s lifestyle. The second photo demonstrates social classes because the class that is on the top has a bunch of gold and is dressed nicely, while the class in the middle has people that look like they have enough money to get by and have a good life, and the bottom class has people that look very poor and unhappy. The definition of social classes is “a broad group in society having common economic, cultural, or political status.” This picture relates to Marjane’s life because Marjane is one of the people on the top of the levels and being on the top affects the way she lives. By being on the top, Marjane does not have as hard of a life as others. She is able to go to a good school to get a good education and come to home a big house with food on the table. In the book Persepolis, social classes are represented because some of the kids are not able to go to school to get an education, while kids in the higher class, like Marjane, are. An example of this is, when Marjane is lying in bed and says “we were not in the same social class but we were in the same bed” (Satrapi 37).This is an example of social classes because Mehri has to work for the Satrapi's. The reason why, is she is in a lower class than Marjane and had to be pulled away from her family to work. Also, she was put in the lower class and had to work because of her economic standing in life. Social classes is a big impact on Marjane's Lifestyle because the different classes mean you have different privileges and you have different economic standings. Marjane just so happens to live in the top