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Marjane presents Iran as a country that underwent through 2500 years of tyrannical rule and submission. The country has been in continuous war with a cavalry of Arabs that invaded the country, Mongolians, and Europeans encroachment after the discovery of oil. Persepolis begins right away after the Iranian revolution that led to the downfall of the Shah of Iran, who had the backing from the American government leading to the thriving of an oppressive Islamic republic. The regime distrusts and outlaws the French co-educational and non-religious school programs, as they are forms of Western influence. Marjane’s parents embraced the modern secular world, although they were supporting the Islamic revolution, they were equally surprised at the random turn of events emanating from the fundamentalists. There is a fundamentalist regime that is forcing women to put on veils and clothes that cover their entire bodies where men have to grow beards and put on long-sleeve shirts. With half of the population, being illiterate Marxism cannot bring people together. The only thing that can foster unity among people is religious ethics or nationalism. Persepolis is a graphic novel that explains a first-hand account of what it means to grow up in Iran (Satrapi, 2007). The book shows that the people of Iran are not evil, but the people who run the country are evil. Most of the people in Iran are just like everybody else in the world and they have a taste for music and parties. They are unwilling to wear the religious veils and clothes that cover them from head to toe. When things begin to worsen in Iran there is the emergence of segregation on a gender basis, women’s rights recede, and family members suspected to be spies face execution. In Iran, women must prevent men from being lustful hence men and women in colleges must take different staircases as a way of shielding men from viewing the women’s butt and subsequently shunning lustful scenarios. Women should not run as this will jiggle their behind leading to lustful events.
Marjane’s story is just fascinating where through her movements to Vienna and back to Iran, she has survived bombings and shootings in various protests and has had a chance to contrast Iran from other countries in the world. Marji discovers that the outside world nurses’ hatred for Iran while she is on her vacation in Europe. The discovery blows her self-esteem, but she clings to the Iranian motto where they believe that a tide will always pass. In Iran, faith has no relationship with ideology, thus bribing is not that evil as money is a motivation for everyone including soldiers, religious, political, and educational institutions. Marji’s father bribes soldiers as a way of putting them away and bars them from searching their homes (Satrapi, 2007).
Reading Persepolis is one of the few eye-opening experiences in literature. Before reading the book, I had a vast accumulation of media propaganda where I developed a perception that Iran is an enemy of the world where all Iranians are striving to cause havoc everywhere. Upon reading Persepolis, you note the existence of millions of citizens in Iran who are not happy with the situation in the country as they are craving to live and enjoy life as we do. They want to chat with girls in the open, listen to music, and become party animals like some of us but they cannot enjoy that due to the fundamentalist religious regime. The book informs us that it is dangerous to let the opinions of a few people dominate the behavior and the will of many.
Persepolis navigates the nodes of religion and modernity the effects of religious repression and the feelings and practices of the religious people who must persevere it. In the beginning, Iran is under the rule of the Shah who has the support of the Western world and America. Despite Marjane and her family’s embracement of the modern secular world that makes them avant-garde, deep inside her lies a deeply religious woman. In the beginning, the power of her religion confers her a type of freedom where religion, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and stories from their traditions elevate her beyond religious mysticism that she escapes into imagined glory to perceive herself as the last prophet, a helper for the weak, and a restorer of social equality. She hates the fact their house cleaner does not dine with them and through her presumable holy commandments, everybody ought to have a car (Satrapi, 2007).
Many of the citizens of Iran were participants and supporters of the Iranian Revolution where they aimed to acquire freedom and emancipation from the decadent and oppressive rule of the foreign-supported Shah. However, to their utter dismay, they end up elevating into power a regime of conservative religious fundamentalists or hard-liners who do not see any compatibility between Islam and Western cultures. The Islamic Republic of Iran, which is the new government, passes laws to rigorously regulate conduct by religion where it outlaws everything that has a relationship with Western cultures such as music or clothes. The novel graphically depicts how the secular Satrapi family hides its affinities to Western ideas behind closed doors. They listen to rock music, consume wine, and purchase prohibited clothes but outwardly manifest their devotion to Islamic values as prescribed by leaders, as the behavior would be a terrible blunder landing them in torture, execution, or beatings (Satrapi, 2007).
Persepolis illustrates how the Islamic Republic of Iran made the country more religious by forcing their religious practices on the population to the extent that Marjane loses her religion following the execution of Anoosh. She no longer explores or thinks about her religion as before as religion has become an option for political or nationalistic agendas. There is a religious fraud where the family’s house help, Mrs. Nasrine, has a key given to her son and other poor boys of Iran as a representation of a direct key or ticket to heaven upon their death as soldiers fighting in the Iran-Iraq War. The governments misuse religion to motivate pupils to join the war where death is certain. Persepolis reveals the religious hypocrisy of officials of the Islamic Republic who portray their allegiance to the law and religion but receive bribes.
When the Revolution unfolds, Marjane, like her fellow citizens and family, is in delight. This is due to the years they have been enduring under an authoritative and despotic ruler, Shah, where now they have an opportunity to ensure that the citizens of Iran enjoy the freedom and the right to determine who leads their country. A patriot and a nationalist, Marjane believes and harbors the value and need for independence in Iran. Her love for the country’s independence is so much that she is willing to fight for it and she also goes an extra mile to congratulate and glorify those who fight for its independence, especially the martyrs. As a child, Marjane has an obsession for heroism where she perceives martyrdom as desirable and positive in the liberation of a country. She is disappointed that her father is not a hero as she expects one of her family members to be a hero. She is delighted to discover that her uncle, Anoosh, was a hero and hence had to flee to the Soviets to shield himself from the Shah’s government that he opposes (Satrapi, 2007).
Marjane’s positive feelings and aspirations for martyrdom and heroism begin to erode as she tries to contemplate the consequences of martyrdom and heroism when the current regime executes her uncle due to his previous political stand. The new regime turned out to be more oppressive and ruthless than that of the Shah where current Iran is worse under the hands of Iranian rulers than was the case under foreign powers.
Before the revolution, Marjane would complain that her father was not a patriot due to his pessimistic views on the revolution. The execution of her uncle brings her to reality where she now discovers that the boys sent to war as martyrs were being brainwashed to work towards nationalism. It dawns on her that nationalism is a double-edged sword that was effective in overthrowing an oppressor and a dictator and again raising a tougher dictator. The national anthem is a symbol of loving or hating her country as it reminds her of the objective of their revolution and the consequences of the same revolution. The activities in her country make her realize that a country is divided in many aspects and Iran was no longer one monolithic culture or one monolithic religion as there were Jews and rivalry between some people in Tehran and some southern Iranians (Satrapi, 2007).
There is a shocking revelation from the historical body count of the people who lost a life on the battlefield since the start of the revolution where more than one million lives were lost. Out of this number, Shah killed a fraction while the current regime killed the other proportion. Marjane expresses her grief but admits that the deaths were inevitable as Iranian people did the damage in the streets and prisons. The engagement of the Iranian regimes employed instruments such as warmongering with Iraq, the radicalization of young pupils to join the war, the employment of religious fanaticism, and the valorization of martyrdom that led to the death of its citizens. The new regime would execute, torture, or impose severe punishment on its citizens for minor infractions such as possessing a forbidden party ticket or errors in wearing the veil. This is an indicator that the attackers and murderers were people in the same country (Satrapi, 2007).
Marjane makes a contention with the reality of the complicity of circles of people residing around her. After the revolution, Marjane and her friends discovered that Ramin’s father was one of the police forces under the Shah’s regime that tortured and killed people. As a result, they made up their mind to kill him by piercing him with nails. Nevertheless, Marjane’s mother intervened and she taught her to embrace forgiveness and not to punish the child of the perpetrator. Upon seeing how the Islamic Republic was perpetrating deaths, she contradicted herself by stating that forgiving bad people is dangerous. This suggests that forgiveness is not a cure, as it does not reform bad people. Marjane’s mother also claims that there is justice on the earth.
Persepolis is a novel that graphically conveys the unfolding of events through a linear path in Iran from the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the socio-political uprisings, and the national referendum that instituted the Islamic Republic, to the Iran-Iraq war. In 1979, there was a nationwide revolution featuring mass protests and political disobedience that led to the end of Shah’s regime who was an autocratic leader who had risen to the helm by inheriting the position from his father. The Shah’s association with America made him popular for his attempt to modernize the country, adoption of land reform policies, and the use of police force to brutalize people secretly with a view of realizing his objectives. The Iran-Iraq war led to the loss of soldiers and civilians and it ended after eight years. There are several issues that Persepolis addresses that this discussion failed to capture due to the limitation of scope regarding pages, but there is much for all of us to learn from this work hence I recommend this eye-opening reading to my classmates. However, in the end, all Persepolis shows that the problem with Iran is the leadership that relies on dogmatization of politics using religion to suppress and oppress its citizens who do not live as they would want.
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