Imagination In Persepolis

Children are known for their imagination and their ability to see things the way adults cannot see. For them, the floor is more than a surface where one can walk, it is a world of danger, full of lava. Marjane Satrapi has an imagination that plays a big part on her first book of the series, Persepolis. Its comic style creates base for Satrapi’s switches between reality and her imagination. We learn that Marjane does not fully understand what is happening in her country, therefore she constantly has to rely on the adults to teach her what is happening and why there is a war going on. Since it is shown through her eyes as a six-year-old to fourteen-year-old, we see things as if we were in her shoes. Her transition from using her imagination to
In the chapter “Water Cell”, Marjane makes a statements that shows to her parents she is confused by the events because of the way she taught, “as for me, I love the King, he was chosen by God” (Satrapi 19). Her parents become confused and ask her where she learned that. Marjane replies, “my teacher and God himself” (Satrapi 19). From there, her father decides that it is best to explain to Marjane the reality of her country. As her father tells the story, Marjane imagines how it happened. After she understood it, she goes on to take a bath so that she would, “know what it felt like to be in a cell filled with water” (Satrapi 25). Throughout this chapter, the scenes she imagines as her father tells the story seem real and accurate, for example on page 24 where we see her mother playing on her grandfather’s back while he is in prison. However, on page 22, there is a panel where Marjane is imagining her grandfather as a prince. Although he was one, in her imagination he rode an elephant and fought lions that had swords, the sun had eyes and the sky was all doodles. Like a child Marjane had a wild imagination and that showed us that even though there were adults explaining to her the degree of the protests, she still had her childish thoughts, which allowed us to see the way she saw things during that
Until Marjane’s turning point, she saw the horrors of the war to a smaller extent and that allowed her still see beauty in her country and in her life. As she grew up, she became more informed and made up her mind on what was worth fighting for, freedom. Since Satrapi stops to switch between imagination and reality, we see that Marjane has grown up and her arc of character is complete for that book. Marjane’s transition is shown through her leaving her imagination and entering the adult world by smoking a cigarette without her parents knowing. After she leaves childhood, Satrapi starts to gives us more information and a bigger picture of the war, which also showed the effects of it. Since we are reading the novel as Marjane, we see as she sees. As the result of her growing, we start to learn more about her country because she was learning it as