Persepolis

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi is a thoughtful examination of the Iranian government’s corrupt regime against its own people. During the late 1970s, Iran experienced cultural upheaval as the citizens fought to remove the amoral Shah from power (Tedla and Dolan). Since the Shah’s removal, Iran has been subject to violence, terrorism, and extreme ideology. The context with which Persepolis was written helps give readers perspective and insight as to the reasoning that motivates Satrapi into such fervor for her religious views and why she simultaneously holds such rebellious beliefs and a self-determination spirit. In the period after the Shah’s removal, the divisions among Iranians persisted and continued to escalate
The plot centers around the events before and during the Cultural Revolution and the sequence of actions that affected the Iranian people like the Satrapi family. Persepolis has generated widespread praise from scholarly communities, Meryl Jaffe of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund(CBLDF) believes this inspiring book should be reintroduced into the public school system, which would help educate students to the conflicts in the Middle East today (“Using Graphic Novels in Education: Persepolis”). Within the introduction, Satrapi explains that some Westerners greed for oil led to unwelcome interference in the region, though not the root cause it perpetuated the turmoil. Through the literary rich work, Persepolis, Satrapi seeks to provide truth into the Iran Revolution by contrasting the stereotypes of common Iranians, exploring the motivations for fundamentalism, and a rational for Iranians acceptance of a dogmatic
Indubitably, as Satrapi correctly identifies, the Western foreign interest in oil helped prolong the instability in Iran government, this trend has continued to mar Middle East and Western relations through to the twenty-first century (Parvaz). The book has gained critical acclaim from a broad range of academics because of its acute detail and the unique perspective it provides (Simon). Utilizing this assortment of literary elements, the diligent author enhances her argument and therefore creates a genuinely through, well-crafted account of the truth. Marjane Satrapi’s perspective is unparalleled; she seamlessly weaves humorous anecdotes into to her truthful attack against the mainstream views concerning Iran and the Cultural Revolution. Interestingly, in the class video titled “Persepolis - Exclusive: Marjane Satrapi,” Satrapi concedes that some fiction is introduced into the story and Satrapi stresses the main objective of Persepolis was to introduce her truth into the world so that people will have a more realistic view of the events that transpired in Iran before, during, and after the Revolution. Overall,