Persepolis
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic narrative - a hybrid, verbal-visual form. It is also a memoir; Marji, the narrative's speaker and protagonist is constructed from Satrapi's memories of her own childhood. Thus, like all memoirs, Persepolis is a personal record of self-interpretation, as well as a documentary record bearing witness to the Iran of Satrapi's childhood. Persepolis, however, complicates the gesture of self-interpretation as documentation by rendering it both visually and verbally. While in some sense, a verbal-visual hybrid is more authentic to experience, the reader is offered a view of Satrapi from behind the fourth wall, rather than from Marji's own eyes. Experience and narrative are highly stylized, and there is ironic distance between the knowing narrator and Marji, the child. Why do you think Satrapi made these choices? Why write a graphic narrative rather than a purely verbal memoir? What can she represent through visual imagery that she cannot verbally? In Persepolis' introduction, Satrapi writes that Iran "has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth." And then finally, "One can forgive but one should never forget." What relationship do you see between Satrapi's choice to write a graphic novel, knowing that the commonly held image of events is "far from the truth," and not forgetting? I realize that these are complicated questions requiring lengthy answers. Please write at least three paragraphs, and please take until next Tuesday.
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Heng Qi
ReplyDeleteIn Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi uses a hybrid of verbal and visual elements to narrate the story. The visual part provides the readers a vivid image and a better understanding of what the verbal part is stating, while the verbal part gives an explanation of what the visual part is expressing. These two elements complement each other and their combination offers the readers a holistic picture of the story.
A graphic narrative can provide the readers, especially those who are not so familiar with the background of the situations or the issues mentioned in the story, an easily understandable image of the verbal statement, which cannot be achieved by just a purely verbal memoir. In some cases, a visual illustration is able to convey an idea which may require a lengthy statement, or even a paragraph of words to express. For example, at the top of page 75, Satrapi uses two pictures to give the readers an image of what is the difference between the fundamentalist woman and the modern woman, as well as between the fundamentalist man and the progressive man. A clear view is presented which requires not many words to accompany. Also, through visual images, Satrapi is able to portray ideas that she cannot verbally. For instance, at the top of page 3, she uses a picture which is described as a class photo without Marji in it to elaborate that the purpose of the veil is to exclude and to cover. This deliberate representation will not be able to be expressed so precisely by just words.
The story is seen through the eye of Marji, the child, which is also Satrapi’s memory of her own childhood. The purpose of this is to show the readers the impact of what happened in Iran had on the life of Marji, as well as on Satrapi’s own life. However, there is a distance between the two. It is obvious that Satrapi, as an adult, must have different feelings towards the experience from that of Marji, a child. Yet, the story is written from the perspective of a child whose unique experience illustrates the point that not everybody experiences the same situation in the same way, which in turn, puts forward the universal idea that nobody is the same. Thus, not everybody in Iran should be related to fundamentalist, fanatic or terrorist. Furthermore, Marji’s childhood experience makes it obvious that what people outside of the situation see is usually not the same as what people experience in it. Hence, the voiceless people who are traditionally unheard should be given a chance to speak up for themselves.
Satrapi uses very child like drawing but intends to put lots of emotion to his writing. As she has a strong feeling in what she is writing about. One can say they are to make her story more understandble. After all she is telling the story at a childs perspective.
ReplyDeleteThe simple illustrations capture copmplicated issues that she Satrapi is trying to further elaborate and imprint on the reader.
For example the veil in the beggining. It covers and hinders and hides and she tries to bring this in the very heading. Since this is a memoir it sometimes presents situations and happenings that are unfimiliar to us, therefore we can not agree or disagree we can can only make conclusions or suggestions to certain actions.
Satrapi uses three perspectives to write - her own as a childs, her parents and her as an adult looking back.
Though some of the things happens in her life there is an element of a biase and exegaration. As the was sure to be butality in Iran and writing comically would not have been appropriate. Starapi uses many writing devices to write such an essay. it is not hard to tell that she writes based on her strong beliefs and she does this inteligently - she introduces the story in Iran as she knew it and as she learned it.
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ReplyDeleteObviously Marjane Satrapi had a reason for choosing to write a hybrid, graphic together with the typical verbal, memoir. Many reasons can be given for this unusual style but I’d like to focus on one in particular. Showing the reader from his/her own experiences makes it even more real. There is no room left for imagination. When one starts imagining the scene they turn it into what they want it to be. This happens at different stages depending on how graphic the author himself is in his wording but without pictures it happens to some extent. With the bad image pointing at Iran like she mentions in her intro I don’t think Satrapi wants to take any risks spending more than half of her life in Iran like she mentions “…I know that this image is far from the truth”. What she wants to do is to change that evil image of Iran as strictly being fundamentalists, fanatics, and terrorists showing people the other half not shown to the outer world and by showing images she is showing that she is taking no risks in the process.
ReplyDeleteShe starts off showing this other half by giving us her vision as a child growing up in a secular home. Yes, she mentions how she was connected with religion by speaking to God a number of times but she doesn’t come from a religious family compared to the way the extremist force her country to be throughout her young life. I believe she wants to show us her view starting from a young child’s point of view to show how an innocent young secular Iranian girl who wants no more than to live a normal life, the way the rest of the world defines it, was affected by an extreme group. They did not associate themselves with them and we know this because of the revolutions mentioned and her family friends thrown in jail. What they wanted was justice, a life, not life being lived for them. Satrapi wants us to grow up with her to show us how it all unraveled for those who wanted normal life the way it was.
Through her choice of using the graphic she shows her reader emotions such as anger, confusion, happiness, surprise, etc. for the reasons of making it more real. In her memoir there is a lot of change in emotion in a short time and prevents the reader from confusion as to what emotion should be felt at a certain time because due to our lack of experience if the play were to only be verbal the reader may not know how to react to a certain situation. By showing us the visual she grabs the reader as to the proper emotion which should be felt and show us how she truly does come from a family that is not interested in the extreme outlook given to Iran.
Jesse Strulowitz
ReplyDeleteIn Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, she uses not only verbal but visual writing to express the feeling and the mood in the story. The story is being told by a young girl who does not necessarily understand what is taking place the whole time, so in order for us to understand it coming from a young girls perspective, we need the visual.
If Satrapi chose to just write and show no visual, the story would be sort of confusing. In the first few pages, Marji describes people protesting, but the visual that we see is not really what was happening but we have to see it from a young girls perspective in order to fully understand and to fully relate to her. Another example of why we need the visual is for when Marji claims to be talking to God. Obviously she is not really having a conversation with God for it is just an imaginary friend, but without the visual we would not understand that.
Satrapi makes it known that how Iran is perceived is not really how they are. People have the wrong idea about them. Like mentioned previously, this story is told by a young girl. It would be very complicated to get an idea of what Iran is really like if we were just hearing it from a young girl, and that is Satrapi decided decided to include the visual because otherwise, we may still perceive Iran in the wrong way.
Persepolis is a memoir of Marjane's own life, recalling her experiences growing up in Iran. She uses a graphic narrative - a hybrid, verbal-visual form. This type of novel is more attractive to readers to read than pure verbal novel. Also, she wants to show readers exactly what she saw and thought when she was child. The readers usually make their own imagine differently while they are reading without pictures. This is more interesting because of happy to see the individual comic characters and many varieties of episodes about discord between Marji’s family life and real social life.
ReplyDeleteThis is not about politic story as different as I thought first time. The politic is background. The story focuses on a child Marji’s view who has lots of curious and unique rebellion. This kind of characters is general form of humanistic. All has their own opinion and emotion of resistance about situation of oppressive but in front of the power of government authority, we are getting small and cowardly. Marji is just like this. She is against fundamentalist but sometimes told lies and had to wear a chador when she goes to school. Her life can be any one of us. This forms get close to readers who leave anytime period to understand easily.
Lastly, this visual novel only shows us black and white. This makes us sometimes tedious not this novel that effects to help understand because some scenes do not seem realistic. For example, meeting and talking with God and Carl Marx and her other imagination like the picture of her grandfather and etc. Her real life and her imagination shows back and forth. Black and white helps readers to connect her narration and imagine keeping coherence by at the beginning to the end of the novel.
Sammy Salamon
ReplyDeleteIn Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, she uses a hybrid, verbal-visual form to express memories from her own childhood. When Satrapi writes her thoughts through her cartoons it expresses what she is actually feeling instead of just words that the reader would have to paint his own picture. One would think just by looking at this book that it may be meant for children or maybe even just simplified for adults, but n reality this book shows the complex life of living in Iran during these times and conditions.
Marjane starts off the story by showing how everything is hidden. Starting off with the chapter name next to a veil, hiding her face, to one of the first pictures of her class with her being cut out. Without this hybrid version of verbal-visual we would never have known that the author is trying to convey a message of everything be hidden. The government forced everyone into religion even though she was secular. If Satrapi hadn't written this hybrid version book one may think otherwise and not actually ahve a first hand experience of what actually was happening in Iran at the time.
Everything through this story happens through the experiences in which Marji experienced it. All of her experiences are used throughout this book in a hybrid, verbal-visual form. One can say that since Marji went through so much in her life, she remembers all the minute details that have happened, as would any 10-year-old girl would. It is very interesting to read this book and see how 10-year-old Marji has viewed the Iranian republic.
Daniel Portal
ReplyDeleteIn her memoir, Marjane Satrapi took a rather bold and less common approach in conveying her story. Typically, one writes a literary work in a purely verbal rather than visual narrative. Visual stories are usually aimed at children audiences. Satrapi brilliantly converges both forms of narrative to give the reader a very “real” experience, which hopefully helps the reader to understand as much as possible what life was like growing up as a child in the midst of Iran’s “cultural revolution”.
In telling over her story, the images of Marji as a child and seeing the words coming out of her mouth, kind of gives the reader the feeling that young Marji is actually talking directly to you. The reader is getting a first-hand account of what is going on in Iran. And so this verbal-visual hybrid form articulates the authors point much more effectively than a simply verbal form could.
In her introduction, Satrapi states that the commonly held image of events is often far from the truth. On one hand, this could be one reason she decided to add a visual aspect to her memoir; that is, in order to almost slightly reconcile the commonly mistaken image of Iran during that time, which is an image of “fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism”. She is trying to give readers a different, perhaps more accurate image of the society she grew up in. On the other hand, Satrapi could have decided to add the visual form in order to attest to the fact that images may be far from the truth. By reading from page to page, the reader sees a limited view of the setting of that scene, and realizes that although the visual aspect gives a more detailed view of the situation, the depiction is only a small window to the world we are unfamiliar with, and even with this imagery, we will never know completely what it was like growing up in that position.
In persepolis, by Marjane satrap is a graphic narrative a hybrid verbal – visual from is also from satrapi’s memories of her own childhood. A verbal – visual hybrid is more true to experience. The verbal parts discuss the relationship between those things. For example, In the Bicycle part, when Satrapi talks with her friend. She said that: “The Revolution is like bicycle. When the wheels don’t turn, it falls”. That can help reader clearly understand the satiation of that part. On the other hand, the visual part gives reader more images which can helps reader understand of the verbal part. Another example in “the bicycle” part, p11 shows that in “2500 years of tyranny and submission” there are three images that can help reader understand the history at the part. The visual part and verbal always complement each other.
ReplyDelete“Even is far from the truth and not forgetting?” from Satrapi’s memories of her own childhood. She has an Iranian who lived more than half of her life in Iran, but she said that “writing persepolis was so important to me.’ By the time, she was a little girl. She doesn’t really know the revolution begin to happen at that time and the police how powerful they are. Like in page 14 “the doors had been locked from the outside a few minutes before the fire”. She was sleeping and talks to the god at that time.
“One can forgive but one should never forget”. One can forgive the people who leaved far from their country. One should never forget the people who died in the revolution.
The book Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is in a comic book format, which is very unique. By verbally and visually telling her memoir, her point and story is expressed much better and easier to understand.Marjane was also intrigued by a comic book she read as a child called "Dialectic Materialism" which might have inspired in choosing to express her memoir in a comic book format. The narrative starts off with Marjane as a young child and throughout the book, she gets older and you witness how much Marjane along with her state of mind change. Through visual imagery, she is able to show exactly what she saw and express what she saw and thought. Living through a revolution and war is different for a child because at a young age, they see things that they shouldn't and they interpret things differently.
ReplyDeleteMarjane wrote that Iran "has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth." Everyone heard a variety of things about Iran, and many people have different ideas. Satrapi, who has lived many years in Iran basically wrote a memoir with all her first hand experiences while living in Iran. Satrapi gave only facts.
"One can forgive but one should never forget." It's easier to forgive someone for what they have rather than to forget what has been done. The people of Iran will never forget what they went through, and what they saw. It's even hard to forget when drastic and life changing events occur. Satrapi expressed what really happened in Iran and not just what was told on the news or radio.
Marjane Satrapi chose to present her memoir as a graphic novel. By choosing such a platform she was able to add a visual element. Although she was forced to limit the words that could fit within the images, Satrapi was able to show events and people how she understood them to be as a child. Satrapi was also able to pace the reader and used the images to describe people and events while maintaining the voice of 10 year old Marji. While providing images usually provides for greater accuracy, in Persepolis, we actually lose some accuracy because we are not seeing photographs but instead highly stylized drawn images, that serve the author's purpose after the initial experience.
ReplyDeleteI think she may have chosen to write a graphic novel for many reasons. The first is the most simple. Marji tells us that one of her favorite books growing up was Dialectic Materialism, which is also written in the form of a comic. Comics are intended to be of minimal difficulty to understand as they usually target children and teenagers. She might be choosing this as a platform in order to target the age group that would most easily relate. Also, by showing the readers images, Satrapi does not need to verbally describe the events that are taking place and instead the images do the work. This allows for her to cover more disturbing and violent events without describing them in great depth.
Satrapi is trying to show that the common belief that Iranians are all terrorists or fundamental Islamists who are barbaric and blood thirsty, is a misconception that bears little merit. She is trying to show the world she grew up in where she too was terrorized and suffered at the hands of fanaticism and that she was not alone in her suffering. Forgiveness is key to being able to move forward, but one must never forget because if we allow ourselves to forget about exploitation and suffering, we open ourselves to the possibility that it will happen again. It goes well with a quotation from poet Maya Angelou, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” By telling her story, Satrapi is speaking out for the voiceless others who suffered like she did. By sharing her story she herself remembers the vicious past and spreads the knowledge to ignorant others.
To convey her life experiences in Iran, Marjane Satrapi wrote a memoir that is both graphic and verbal. Satrapi felt that a graphic narrative is necessary in expressing what she went through as a child and a growing adult. She uses the visual narrative to correct the thoughts and images that those living outside Iran tend to believe to be true. Every image in the book is drawn to reflect Marji’s thoughts, feelings, and views of every situation. She especially writes the events going on in Iran from her perspective so that the readers can view a true depiction of an Iranian citizen and what he/she experienced. Satrapi is using her life to represent most Iranians. In her situation a verbal narrative of her life, I believe, is not sufficient enough to express what she went through, especially since the purpose of the book requires more than a narrative. The purpose of the graphic and verbal novel is to show and tell the readers the events of the time, and to recuperate any fictitious beliefs that the world has.
ReplyDeleteAnother choice that Satrapi chooses is to tell over her story from a child’s perspective, as opposed to her adult self writing about her past. The fact that she chooses to do this conveys a strong message. A child is born into a blank world whose mind is molded by the society and people around him/her. Satrapi is using the child’s point of view to express confusion, doubt, and fear. There are many instances in the novel in which Marji is conflicted as to what she hears and sees. Marji doesn’t know what to make of what she is being exposed to. There are constant visualizations of Marji’s confusing and surprising facial expressions, in response to something that she never would have thought to occur. For example, when Marji finds out that Ahmed, a friend of the family, was severely tortured with lashes and iron burns, she asks with confusion: “I never imagined that you could use that appliance for torture.” Above all, Satrapi wants the readers to relate to Marji’s life.
The relationship between Satrapi’s choice to write the graphic novel and not forgetting is indeed related. In Persepolis' introduction, Satrapi writes that Iran "has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth." And then she notes, "One can forgive but one should never forget." First of all, the graphic novel relates to the inhabitants of Iran, both former and present. One, she is trying to tell the citizens of Iran do not forget the hardships and difficulties that each one faced, and two, she illustrates her point that she mentioned in the introduction throughout the novel. Satrapi is reaching out to the Iranians by giving a depiction of her life and in part showing the world that all the assumptions made towards Iranians is not true. In her novel, she is justifying the accusations and assumptions made towards the people through the graphics of the novel. In saying, “One can forgive but one should never forget,” Satrapi is addressing the readers as well. On behalf of the citizens of Iran she is informing the readers that even though the people can forgive what the intruders did, they will never forget the pain inflicted on them.
Kathy Lee
ReplyDeleteIn Persepolis, Marjane chooses a graphic narrative - a hybrid, verbal-visual form to show her memoir during the war when she was young. This hybrid narrative is more effective than only saying in purely verbal memoir. Also, to readers it is easy to understand what she saw and thought at that time because they don't know what happend at that time. Sometimes little marji is the narrator, sometimes grown up marjane is the narrator, or sometimes marjane satrapi is the narrator to show her story.
Because she was young, she didn't understand everything what people did but she wants to know lots of things about politics - usually other young children do not. However, we can see through the situation with young child's eye, it is not that serious. She explained a lot of things - such as death of her friend and uncle and goes to Austria. Through this process, she grows up little by little.
Satrapi writes that Iran "has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth." To show it, she chose a graphic narrative. It is hard to explain purely verbal narration, therefore it should be harmonized with verbal and graphic narration. But sometimes it can bring misunderstanding to readers because it is not everyone's thinking but her own thinking. For this reason, she says "it is far from the truth."
The choice Satrapi made to write using the medium of a comic book was a very deliberate one. It affords her many different ways in which she can express the story to the reader, as well as stylistic opportunities that a regular novel doesn't have.
ReplyDeleteOne of the traits of the graphic novel is that it always maintains a childlike feel to it, which is perfect for the entire part of the novel which is expressed through Marji's perspective. As affective as regular novels can be, no matter who's perspective a book is written in, reader's still have the reflex of putting themselves inside the story as the main character, and I feel like the effect Persepolis has is that it adheres to the approach of making the reader into the spectator, not allowing the reader's feelings or biases to get in the way as much. Its like a zoologist who is inside the cage, tampering with an animal's environment, as opposed to someone observing whats going on from outside the animal's cage. It provides for a much more unbiased way of understanding the book.
Satrapi also has the ability to show us what she's thinking visually. Theres a whole body-language-element to reading now. Not only does the reader have to read whats going on, he must also focus on what the character's facial expression's are showing.
Theres also a sarcastic element to it, how the subject matter can be so dark and yet its expressed in such a "light" way. It almost makes the story more bearable, the fact that its in comic form. It detaches the human element from the story in a certain sense, which makes all the atrocities that go on more bearable for the reader.
The book “Persepolis” was written by Marjane Satrapi who was born in Iran. The book used a comic form to present the own experience of a little girl. She used both visual and verbal language to generalize scenes that happened in a country where people were suffering.
ReplyDeleteThe reason she chose to write this book as a comic form is trying the best to present the situation to audiences. The story is about a little girl’s life in Iran which the country was surrounded by revolution, war, and terrorism. The book was introduced from a child’s perspective. It is better using graphic than only writing a essay form. First of all, the visual form can directly transform author’s mind to audiences. If she only wrote a essay for this book, it would be harder for audience to understand her point of view, and even sometimes twist her own meanings. Second, due to the topic, there were many scenes that were better to describe this way. Back there, Iran was been through some terrible time. People were dying. For the most audiences who read the book, those are not familiar. By drawing graphs can give audiences a better way to understand. And furthermore, the book is sort of memoir. Marjane accorded the life way back when she was still a child. In the beginning of the book, marjane was only six. Some scenes in the book didn't actually happen. Instead, they were some child imaginations. By writing an essay, audiences couldn't tell which parts were not real. However, audiences can easily clear this point by seeing graphs, and some scenes that were tragic, ironic were better presented.
Marjane’s book is far from the truth for an Iranian who lives his most of life in Iran. It is easily understood that she may be overstated the fact in her book because she remembered her life in Iran as a little girl all the time. For her, some tragic things happened, her uncle was executed, and even witness the death of her friend, clearly affect her a lot. And also I guess the potential reason of writing this book is telling people not to forget the past, be appreciated.
Shuai Han
ReplyDeletePersepolis, graphic novel, is written by Marjane Satrapi. In the memoir, Marjane creates a protagonist called Marji, a young and naïve version of Marjane, to show her early experience. As the novel develops, Marji grows up, and becomes adult version of Marjane. Different situations and various traumatic circumstances shape Marji’s identity to transform from a naïve and irresponsible to a mature and well-educated adult. Over the course of the memoir, Satrapi emphasizes on “identity”. The grandmother of Marji keeps telling Marji to remember where is she from and who is she. When Marji was in Austria, she heard other friends making fun of her. She was upset and disappointed by a sense of betrayal. She came to her friends and told them that she is very proud of being an Iranian. On the opposite side, when Marji walks on the street with her make up, she is afraid of being arrested due to inappropriate dressing code. At last, she decides to cast blame on an innocent man who sits on the stair. When Marji gets home, she talks to her grandmother. However, the grandmother yells at Marji because Marji forgets her own identity.
The book is unique because Satrapi employs both verbal and essay format. The first reason for Satrapi to use graphic narrative is that comic book is one of the easiest ways to understand the book without lots of efforts. The second reason for Satrapi to use graphic narrative is that some pictures can vividly capture those traumatic incidents and violent events without describing them in an essay format. The last reason for Satrapi to use graphic narrative is that Satrapi was inspired by her most favorite comic book called “Dialectic Materialism”.