Marjane Satrapi’s magnum opus tells us the story of an Iranian upper-middle-class girl (Schjeldahl), who is forced to relinquish her childhood with the onset of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Personally, I think “Persepolis” tackles a range of complex issues: personal and national identity crises, political continuity versus revolutionary change, and the struggle of collective fundamentalism against individual self-preservation. The psychological, political and cultural themes coalesce to deliver a crude and compelling message. At the end of the novel I was left with the impression that the Iranian people were tragically blinded; first, by a naïve and desperate hope, and second by a blind conformity in the face of a violent political storm, one that ended up pushing them down an abyss of religious fundamentalism.
Firstly, it was evident that as a descendant of a cosmopolitan, political (and onetime imperial dynasty), Marjane’s exposure to the multi-dimensional turmoil Iran went through in 1979 was pivotal to her precocious development of an individual conscience. Having a traditional religious upbringing, her instinctive reaction of turning to “God” reminds me how children fervent and ardently respond to indoctrination of any kind. Later, it’s the execution of her communist uncle, Anoosh, that introduces her with inconsolable grief and presents a personal challenge in her understanding of how political realities can directly affects her personal life.
This first identity crisis struck her at the same time Iran faced its own: the transformation into a self-styled “Islamic Republic” presented a rupture from everything the country and its society had previously experienced. Surprisingly, her contact with Marxism at the formative stage of her political identity drove her to revere communism (and atheism) as the only way forward. This sort of “pendulum” effect, i.e. from one extreme of the spectrum to the other, serves as a reflection of the state of mind of the average illiterate Iranian. A lack of information and access to education left the bulk of the lower class exposed to the fundamentalist views of the new elite in power. It seems to me that uneducated masses can be equally as impressionable as any child, which is why the new political elite was able to quickly establish a new regime.
At this point in time I think a naïve hope governed the hearts of the Iranians, who must have genuinely thought there it was not humanly possible to live in harsher conditions than those they were subjected to during the reign of the Shah. Alas, history had quite the opposite in store.
Secondly, the denunciation of the imperial past—and the rejection of Marxist ideals—left Marjane and her family as authentic outsiders. Having embraced globalization and modern progressive values, they were at constant risk of being seen and accused as agents of Western influence. This new hostile landscape for the Satrapi family was only exacerbated with the spark of the Iraq-Iran War in 1980. Saddam Hussein saw the opportunity of invading Iran at its weakest hour of domestic instability and infighting. Unfortunately, the hostilities only helped buttress the new regime, which ended up hunkering down and cranking up repression of any dissidence.
As soon as the survival of the Revolution became equated to the survival of the Iranian state, it was the end of the line for any internal opposition. Any hopes of building an inclusive and open society were dashed away for the sake of protecting national sovereignty through martyrdom. As Eberstadt very eloquently puts it in his review on The New York Times: “Satrapi is adept at conveying the numbing cynicism induced by living in a city under siege both from Iraqi bombs and from a homegrown regime that uses the war as pretext to exterminate ‘the enemy within.’” In my opinion, this is quite possible one of the worst-case scenarios for a post-Revolutionary society that has just abandoned a system in place for over two millennia.
Thirdly, it’s the need to survive that leads to compliance, and it is compliance which leads to acquiescence. The rise of religious fundamentalism was unstoppable, and I imagine it was impossibly difficult to cope with the veil as a symbol of dogmatic oppression and dominance.
Thus, I believe it was clear the only way Marjane could have survived was to escape. Her parents understood so in time when they decided to send her to Austria: “[] considering the person you are and the education you’ve received, we thought that it would be better if you left Iran.” (Satrapi 147). She was never equipped to simply conform to the rule of a religiously-inspired collective. As long as she remained on Iranian soil, her own mind and liberated spirit were her own worst enemies. This tension is reflected at every occasion when she confronts the “new normal” against the new indoctrination she was starting to be subjected to in school.
Her sense of individual self-preservation prevailed, and serves as a refreshing reminder that regardless of their origin, background, and environment, people can discover ways to develop and maintain their individuality in the face of totalitarianism. I find Marjane’s story as an exemplary case of the way people can use education to resist being reduced to a part of the mass. After reading about her experiences through her own voice, I cannot help but to think of other contemporary female activists like Malala Yousafzai, who took it upon themselves to take a stand against religious oppression and faced adversity through education and self-empowerment.
In conclusion, “Persepolis” is one of those unforgettable pieces of literature that speak about the seemingly insurmountable challenges people in non-Western cultures still face today. Female liberation is still far away for women in places like the Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East, this is why books like these can help shed more light on the plight of women across these territories were her dignity and human rights are still being trampled by religious fanaticism and totalitarian regimes hell-bent on maintaining the patriarchal status quo. Marjane Satrapi and Malala Yousafzai are an example of women with agency, who decide to stand up for the causes they believe in and are willing to sacrifice their lives before compromising and complying with the unjust and hegemonic systems governing their nations. In learning a new angle of this story from the perspective of a childhood interrupted, it helped me remember how crucial the formative stage of children’s minds is; it can create leaders capable of championing for human rights, or it can engender perpetuators of oppressive revolutions that can enslave entire nations.
Works Cited
Eberstadt, Fernanda. “God Looked Like Marx.” The New York Times, 11 May 2003.
Web. 7 May 2016.
Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. 1st ed. United States: Pantheon
Books, 2004. Print.
Schjeldahl, Peter. “Words and Pictures.” The New Yorker, 17 Oct. 2005. Web.
7 May 2016.
