There is a character called Marji who is aged ten in 1980. Islamic revolution had just begun the year before in 1979. A lot of changes were taking place and new, strange and very strict rules were introduced. Some of the rules included girls having to wear veils conditionally and segregated on the basis of their sex. Boys and girls were not allowed to mix freely. Secular education was also banned. Marji happens to hail from a religious but yet modern family. She is baffled by almost all of these changes. She doesn’t understand what the veil means and she grapples with its meaning. When she was much younger, she had thought that she could that some of these things that she perceived as injustices taking place in the world. The only way she could do that was by becoming a prophet (Kurzman, C., 2004).
The revolution is defined by many forms of oppression as it starts. There is a lot of oppression by the Shah. Marji observes this and learns about socialism and revolutions. She learns about many revolutionists and socialist around the world, like Fidel Castro, Leon Trotsky, Iranian socialist revolutionaries, Fatemi, the American-Vietnam war and the Descartes.Nobody was allowed to wear makeup, with no freedom of speech, with no freedom to dress how you chose, and with no freedom of thought, she knew change couldn’t wait any longer. People were whipped around for the slightest mistakes they made of not abiding by the new rules. Life was unbearable and almost unlivable. There were politically motivated detentions for those perceived to be rebelling with the autocratic rule.
Marji’s great-grandfather was a Qajaremperor who was overthrown through a coup de tat in around 1925 by the father of the current king with the support of the British. Under the new emperor, her great-grandfather and his family had their property confiscated. Her grandfather, who was western educated, was also appointed a prime minister got imprisoned for his communist agitations. He was made to stay in a water filled cell for many hours. Marji starts to imagine what her grandfather might have experienced in the cell filled with water by having herself seated in a bath for some time. The brutal Reza Shah rule was succeeded by his own son, Mohammed Reza, who appeared more brutal, almost ten times more brutal than his father.
The society is structured unfairly and everybody must remain in their social class and never associate with the social classes higher than theirs (Malek, A., 2006). She embarks on a task to convince people to be part of the anti-Shah demonstrations which she leads. People were very receptive of her anti-Shah actions and were in solidarity with her. On one black Friday in 1978, many protestors were shot and murdered by the regime’s armed forces.
Works Cited
Kurzman, C. (2004). The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Malek, A. (2006). "Memoir as Iranian Exile Cultural Production: A Case Study of Marjane
Satrapi's Persepolis Series". Iranian Studies 39 (3): 353–380.
