Saturday, March 2, 2013

Reader Response 1 Persepolis


Christopher Avalos
Professor Knapp
English 1A
03 March 2013
         Persepolis is a graphic novel, in comic strip format, that details the life of a girl named Marjane Satrapi as she experiences the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In the beginning of the novel she explains how she speaks to God every night and eventually would like to be the last prophet. Her parents are revolutionaries and are out protesting all day so naturally she is upset when her parents deny her permission to go out with them. Of course they could not let her go but with great reason, officers would usually shoot into the crowds and the crowds would be throwing rocks back at the officers. The protests could get very violent at times.
The revolution begins when Marjane is at the age of ten. She starts noticing some changes especially when the schools start segregating students by sex and the female students are required to weir a black veil over their face. Marjane’s family is religious at heart but very modern so she is taken aback when she learns about this. Coming from a family with similar attitudes towards religion with modern parents, I can relate to Marjane such that, if I were forced to wear a cross around my neck at school, I would be very confused because of the way schools are secular and I had been brought up this way.
At school, she is taught lessons that often contradict with the revolution and her parents’ beliefs, so her parents start to educate her and tell her stories about her family and the revolution. She learns her friends have stories of heroes in their families and Marjane wants to compete with them so she asks to hear multiple stories from her family. She learns her great grandfather was the emperor before the Shah’s father overthrew him. He was appointed prime minister when he Shah took power but he would eventually become a communist and be imprisoned. Marjane cannot stand it when she feels someone else has a better story to tell than her. I know I sometimes feel a little competition in me and I love it when my story is the best out of everyone else’s.  
From reading Persepolis up to this point, I have learned much information that I had not previously known about Iran. There are many things that are left out in our American textbooks which I feel is a form of censorship to force our nation’s people to form a bias. Iran has gotten to its current state because of all the events that have happened in the 20th century and more currently, this past decade in the 21st century. Western powers have shaped Iran’s state of politics completely. I am curious to read more of this book; I would like to see how things turn out for Marjane and her family.
           

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