Leaving God Behind: An Examination of Persepolis: The story of a Childhood

Posted by: dagamdagee on: October 24, 2008

• In: Research Papers
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Daniel Wise
Dr. Weinstein
English 480
04/20/08
Upon reading Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, I have come to the conclusion that the story itself is about the discourse between new beliefs, an old God, and finding a sense of individuality.  At a young age, Marji has a certain child-like naïveté of God, believing him to be a figure that leads people, as a figure to admire.  As she became more aware of the world, she likened God to Karl Marx and would often have conversations with him about how she would be a prophet and a sort of revolutionary for her people.  Certain events eventually led her to question her prior beliefs and goals, much like any traumatic situation can cause people to question their faith.  This chain of events leads Marji to ways in which she finds her own sense of individuality.  Even under the fundamentalist way of life, she found ways to facilitate her need to express herself differently.  With a jean jacket and Iron Maiden posters in hand, she stood up to the old ways of living.  She finds herself through life experiences particularly with her uncle Anoosh who visits and tells her about his time working for his Uncle Fereydoon, a man who started a small republic in the province of Azerbaijan.  He tells her many stories of spending time in prison, executions of comrades and living a life on the run from the Shah’s soldiers.  Other encounters shape her into a strong, independent woman who loses her childhood innocence and develops a rather contemptuous attitude towards officials.

Persepolis is similar to Art Spiegelman’s Maus, where Marji reflects Art himself, and Art’s father Vlad.  She is a person who is trying to come to grips with the fact that there is so much going on with her family at one time as well as staying on the run from Islamic fundamentalists.  She is very resourceful like Vlad but she has a very carefree attitude.  She is extremely ambitious.  She reflects Art in a way where she has this desire to learn about her family history.  While not receiving much from her parents, she picks up bits and pieces.  When the Shah is overthrown, friends of the family are released from prison and she picks up on the stories that are told.  She also makes a deep connection with Anoosh, her uncle and close friend of her family.  She hears stories from him about his time in prison and she becomes absolutely enthralled by it.  Marji struggles to understand her family and why they are so fortunate.  They live a decent life in Iran and they are very politically active.  They have their own handmaid and also drive a Cadillac.  Marji tries to develop some type of rational for this and decides that she will become a prophet.  She becomes friends with the handmaid and tells of her desire to give everyone the type of freedom that she herself has.
Persepolis offers a wide variety of characters that undergo their own transformations as the story progresses.  Marji of course is a young girl who has a conflict that is brewing within her as she deals with God, politics and the strife that occurs during a time of war.  Eventually she evolves into an independent person that develops the ability to be on her own.  Unbeknownst to her, this development ultimately prepares her for when her parents send her to Austria.  Marji is an interesting person to examine through the course of the story.
Marji’s family plays a major role in developing her character through the years.  Her parents are very supportive of her and allow her to become a person who is influenced by western cultures.  They are against the fundamentalist takeover of Iran and he gives her as many opportunities to be the girl that Marji wants to be.  He is a very compelling character to look at throughout the story.  He is really the foundation of the family and gives everyone the type of life they wish to lead.  He is opposed to the Shah and the Islamic Republic and keeps a cool head even in the direst situations.  Throughout the story he finds ways to sneak around the fundamentalists through buying Marji rock posters and keeping alcohol.  The scene at the end of the movie illustrates the fear that he feels when he is letting Marji go to Austria.  He has a feeling that he won’t see her again and one can notice a deep sadness in his eyes.  He’s very wary of the entire situation with the fundamentalists and the bombing of Iraq.  He always listens to the BBC to receive news and to make sure that he is not simply receiving propaganda from the Iranian government.
Taji is Marji’s mother and like her husband Ebi, she is against the shah and the fundamentalist takeover.  She gives Marji a first hand account of a demonstration against using headdresses; however, the demonstration gets out of hand and a fellow protester is stabbed in the leg.  Taji is slightly stricter than Ebi but she still allows Marji to develop her own personality.
Marjane grows up having several influences in her life including her family’s hand maid.  The maid falls in love with a boy who lives across from the Satrapi family and upon Ebi’s and Taji’s discovery the maid is punished.  Marji’s parents still lived by the rules of the country and one of the rules was that people of different social classes were not supposed to interact with each other.  The maid is no doubt upset about it and lies in her room crying.  Marji attends to the maid and comforts her in her time of need.  There is a certain type of empathy that Marji feels for the maid, but it is somewhat deadpan.  She lays with the maid, both with hand marks on their faces from Marji’s mother but Marji is comfortable with the situation.  The maid was her closest friend growing up and she was able to have her in her development.
The maid may seem like an unlikely character that would be helping Marji on her way to becoming independent, because people often depend on maids.  Instead, Marji found a friend and confidant when her parents were away.  The maid would listen to her stories and laud her for her desire to be a leader in the future.
Marji herself is not oblivious to the social injustice going on around her.  The situation with her maid opens her eyes and she feels this strong desire to become a prophet.  Although that type of attitude is looked down upon at her school, she still has this sense that she can do more with her life than what she is doing right now.  Her parents are proud of the fact that she wants to make some type of difference in the world.  Marji says that she wants to be a prophet so that she can abolish social classes, allow everyone to drive a Cadillac like her father, and to make her grandmother not ache anymore.
When Marji is ten years old, the protesters had overthrown the Shah and she finds out from her family friends that she is the descendant of the last Persian emperor.  She hears this story about how a low ranking officer named Reza overthrows her great grandfather and crowned himself the Shah.  She also learned that her grandfather was a prime minister.
The character who became most important in molding Marji into a powerful character is her uncle Anoosh.  Anoosh is her favorite uncle and is enthralled with his stories of life in prison and being on the run from the people whom he was against.  He worked for his uncle, a man who worked to make Azerbaijan an independent country, yet he was captured and executed by the Shah.  Anoosh finds refuge in the U.S.S.R. but is later captured and spends nine years in jail.  Anoosh became Marji’s favorite uncle because she respected his defiance against the powers that be.  They immediately connect with each other when he comes home from prison.  He gives her a dove made of breadcrumbs, but the most important quality he has is his frankness and his willingness to tell his stories to Marji.  She is sent into a state of wonder when Anoosh comes home and she spends hours listening to his storied.  Her uncle is later captured again and is killed.  Marji visits him periodically before his execution and they say goodbye one last time.
Tragedy always seems to shape a person.  It is like what Proust says is that the years when you are most miserable are the best years of your life.  Marji doesn’t seem to realize until the very end how much she meant to people in Iran.  She realizes that her friends were important to her and that losing them can be a hard reality in a war torn country.  While taking bombs from Iraq and the fundamentalist regime in Iran, she is subject to a close call where a bomb lands on the building next to her house, killing the family of a childhood friend.
The Iraq war is the climax of the story and a turning point in Marji’s life.  Her parents realize that the situation is becoming too much to bear in Iran and they decide to send Marji to Austria to go to school.  At this point, there is a transformation that takes place.  On the trip to the airport, the mood is somber and her parents are making every effort to keep their composure during this time.  As they part ways at the airport, Marji has this internal struggle on whether to look back at her parents or not.  She ends up looking back at them and witnesses the full extent of their distraught over the overwhelming situation.  As Ebi walks off with Taji in his arms, she thinks to herself that it would have been better if she had not looked back at all.
Through the years the reader can see a transformation that occurs within Marji and she shows this profound nature to adapt to any type of situation.  Even with death all around her, she still has the willpower to keep fighting.  She is a strong willed girl who loses much in the process of growing up, but due to the fact that she’s used to everything that has happened, she seems to take everything in stride.  The only times she ever shows a frail side to herself is when her uncle Anoosh is executed and when she sees her parents walking away at the airport.  She sees everything that comes from the western culture as intriguing and she finds herself through music and fashion.  She openly wears a jean jacket with pins and stays defiant even in the face of the fundamentalist women who catch her on the street.  Marji is a character that can be looked at as a strong model for getting through any type of struggle and that is an endearing quality that will carry this book for years to come.  There are times in this book where Marji is precocious, defiant, strong and weak.  She goes through a roller coaster ride of emotion and she comes out a strong person.

At the end she is separated from her family and is worried that she will never see them again, but she makes it a mission to see them sometime in the future.  She holds her family close to her and she desires to come back at a later time.  Her strength that developed over the course of the story allows her to take the flight to Vienna and without that strength, she would not have been able to separate from her parents.  She still contains this air of defiance and strength that allows her to stay the course on her life.