Final Paper

Persepolis pages 94-103

Persepolis is one of the texts that I have truly fallen in love with in this class. Although it is a graphic novel and reminds me of a comic, it goes far beyond that. I really like the way Satrapi chose to draw the entire story as the way a child would. It really showed how she saw the world when all of the events were happening in her country. I like the pages that I chose because it showed how devastating events such as war can be trivialized into something as small as a reward for dying for your country. I understand that it is an honor to die for your country but to send children off to war with a key that guarantees them an entrance into paradise is just twisted.
This text does remind me though of an experience in my life. When 9/11 happened everyone wanted to be patriotic in my high school and people wanted to join the military right after high school because they wanted to fight terrorism and die for their country. I didn’t because I thought it was a ridiculous reason to join the military just to die. I received a lot of criticism because I wasn’t “patriotic enough”. This relates to the key in Satrapi’s book because the children were brainwashed into thinking that if they died in war then they would go to paradise. That’s what I felt people in my high school were doing was the same thing that was happening in the story.
I like the fact that Satrapi really lets the reader into her personal life and showed her everyday experiences with an oppressive regime. For example, when she was younger she told how everyday all the students in her class had to line up and beat their chests to honor the dead martyrs that died for their country. It’s almost like an extreme version of the pledge of allegiance. While we do it to honor our country, she does because they are forced to and must honor the people that blindly died for their country.
The fact that the novel is in black and white is also another thing that I like about the book. If it were in color I don’t know if I would have liked it that much, but since it was in black and white it kind of gave a distant view of her past. Just like in the movie, all of the past was in black in white and the present was in color. It was more convincing in black and white because it separated itself from having colors to display emotion and war and it strictly went on feeling and the text to convey most of these scenes.
Although I liked the novel for its story and how the book was drawn and illustrated. I really liked the characters of the book. Satrapi portrayed all of her characters in such a way that you really felt like they were a part of your family and that you could really relate to them. Many times during the story I felt as if I were seeing people in my family appear in the book, that’s how human they felt and how much they mirrored people in real life.
Salmon Rushdie’s argument on religion being a central force in society fits perfectly with the ten pages of my reading. Rushdie’s claim that religion is a guiding force in most Indian cultures and it is reflected in the reading of Persepolis I have chosen. The quote “At school they lined us up twice a day to mourn the dead, they put on funeral marches, and we had to beat our breasts” (satrapi, 95). It was almost a ritual of “going through the motions” for many children because they did not know why they did it; they just did it because their elders told them to do it.
Rushdie claims that most religions in Indian cultures there is no question of how or why something is done when it comes to religious matters. It is just done without any thinking; there is no alternative to not participating in religious events. This is true because in the story the girls would have to participate in mourning the dead or they would be sent to the principal’s office and could possibly be expelled. This would be detrimental because at that time most schools were very scarce because of the regime and the war that was happening in Iran.
Rushdie also explains that politics plays an important role in the religious and cultural events that happen in most eastern cultures. This is true in some sorts, in Persepolis many of the daily events that the citizens had to do were not by their own will. It was forced by the regime that was in power, and example of this would be the wearing of the veils by the children in class. The children would always question of why they had to wear them and what purpose they stood for, however it was never really explained to them. Adults in the book didn’t even question it anymore; they just gave up and accepted in for what it was.
Another aspect of Rushdie’s argument was the hybridization of the western and eastern cultures in the book and what was going on in Iran at the time. Many of the children in the book were used to western culture and the clothing and music that came along with it. When the regime showed up, that was all taken away and the children had to revert back to the customs that were practiced long ago by their ancestors. Rushdie’s argument was that when a culture is subjected to a new influence for a period of time, it is very hard for them to go back to what was the “norm” in their cultures because they have been forever changed by this influence.
The reading of these ten pages can be interpreted through John Lennon’s song “imagine”, one of the lyrics states “nothing to kill or die for and no religion too” (Lennon, 1971). This is perfect line because of all the war going on in Iran at the time and the religious oppression from the regime, it would be nice to just imagine that there wasn’t any war and no oppressive regime and life could go on as it was. This is significant in the reading because the whole section is about the boys receiving keys to “guarantee” them a place in paradise if they died for their country.
Another line from the song fits perfectly with the whole feeling of dying for your country in the book, the lyric says “imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky” (Lennon, 1971). This lyric conveys the possibility of what if everyone just stopped fighting for their religion or if people stopped believing in an all powerful being that looked over them and that they needed to please. If they stopped believing, then no one would have any reason to try to go to war over their beliefs.
The Iranian war in the book is a reflection of what is happening today in Iraq and Iran. Today there are hundreds of civilians and thousands of soldiers that are being killed in Iraq and Iran over the war that some people don’t even know why it started. The section I chose relates to the war in Iraq today. Many people see the war and just look at it for its face value; it’s just another story on the nightly news. However, what they don’t look for is what and who it is affecting.
The article I chose tells about how a bombing on a mosque was the deadliest bombing on a mosque in Iraq history. What makes it worse was that leaders from both sides were meeting that day in order to discuss a national unity agreement. This is just like Persepolis, where people were being bombed unannounced and unguarded just because they happened to be on the “wrong side” of the war. Although reading the selection may not seem like a real event due to it being a graphic novel, keep in mind that it was to reflect the events that were going on in the world at the time the book was written.
The world itself is starting to look a lot like the book Persepolis. We are in the midst of a war that has taken up the better part of a decade; the funny part is we have no idea what we are still doing there. Every day in the Middle East more soldiers and more terrorists die for what they “supposedly” believe in and what they are told is a just cause. However, this may not be the case. According the article from CNN.com, a Shiite coalition bombed a mosque that contained Sunni worshippers. Over 180 were wounded and 79 were killed, all in the name of religion.
This was also the case in Persepolis; young boys were given plastic, trivial trinkets as a symbol of martyrdom. They all went to war believing that they would die for their country and it would be a “just cause”. This also was the case in the Iranian war some twenty years ago and even today in the Iraq war and all of the bombings, people dying for religion. This entire war and Persepolis all focused on the aspect of religion and the rewards of “martyrdom”.
In a way Persepolis could be considered the first Persepolis book. Now with the Iraq war going on, there could be a second Persepolis written. However, it could be written from a child’s view that is from a country that is starting to invade another country. There could be many Persepolis’s written over many years because of some of the wars that are going on right now in the world.
This book has really made an impact on me, not only did it open my eyes to more non-western literature it also helped me understand that not all books need to be just words in order to get feelings and emotions across. They can also be illustrations that don’t “dumb it down” to a comic book style. This book is definitely one I would recommend to anyone if they wanted to read more non-western literature.