Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood Marjane Satrapi is an autobiography about Marjane younger years in Iraq during the Iraq Revolution.  

            The first chapter [The Veil] starts off with Marjane being ten in 1980, a year after the revolution. She struggles to adjust that she has to wear a veil to cover her hair. She doesn’t understand that they’re being separated by sex and non-religious schools were being banished. Marjane was born into the world where it is modern yet still religious. She adapt to the modern part of the world, and not picking up her religion like her family has. That was one of her struggles of her understandment of the revolution, but the year before this, her school was a French non-religious school where the boys and girls could mingle.

            In the next chapter of the book, The Bicycle, Marjane starts to understand and accept the segregation and concept of the revolution. She describes the revolution as a bicycle in page 13. “The Revolution is like a bicycle. When the wheels don’t turn, it falls.” Her friends agree with her and wants to take part in the protest with her parents.

The difference of the two chapters are like the north and south poles. She doesn’t really understands what is happening in “The Veil”. Her parents were part of the protestors of the revolution and she had a dream with god. Her dream insists of god explaining how she is the prophet, teaching her and tending her. She wants to help the world be a better place by being the prophet. Then the next chapter, “The Bicycle”, she gains her knowledge of the revolution and she wants to stop and abolish the revolution, with the two friends.

When her parents ask her what she wants to be, she answers “I want to be a doctor (12)”

But later on, Marjane feels guilty towards God. When she went to sleep, she had another conversation with God. God felt let down and betrayed, but Marjane “cheered him up” by saying she just didn’t want anyone else to know. But earlier that day, she told her grandma and her classmates she wanted to be a prophet. Her grandma accepted her and didn’t think it was irrational, but her classmates thought differently. Her classmates laughed at her and thought she was crazy.

          In conclusion, Marjane wanting to be the prophet is to help her family and place to be a better place. But people don’t accept her dream and just pushes her away, like her parents when Marjane asked if she could join the protest with her.