But life is no better in Iran, as she discovers when she eventually returns home. The comfort of the familiar is offset by the suppression of individual rights. In order to go to art school, she must be deemed ideologically fit. She must wear her veil in such a way that not a hair on her head is visible, and she risks arrest merely being seen on the street with her boyfriend. In the end, after she graduates from school with a degree in graphic arts and her marriage to her boyfriend fails, she again goes into exile, this time to Paris, where she currently lives.
Ms. Satrapi could have told her story just as easily in a straight autobiography, and I'm sure it would have made for fascinating reading. But by telling it as a graphic novel, she brings a visual dimension to it that increases its impact. The graphics themselves are plain black and white, pen and ink drawings, but her ability to use imagery to tell the story as a complement to dialogue and narration makes them as effective as if they were in full colour.
The visual element allows her to include the offstage, and imagined, action as part and parcel of the main narrative flow. Instead of having to impart information as separate incidents, where its impact is reduced by removing it from the context of the story, we see things as they happen, increasing the emotional power of the moment. There is something about the directness of her style that allows her to do two things admirably: to distinguish between individuals easily with just small strokes of the pen (and when all the women are clothed in all over black that's very important) and make her depiction of horrors, death, torture, and anguish, emotionally realistic without being graphic or gruesome.
The other day George Bush got up and said that it's time for the world to "do something about Iran". What he has in mind, the bombing and destruction of the country and the theft of her oil reserves, won't do anything for the people of that country. All it will do is lead to the further anguish for people like Marjane Satrapi's parents and friends, who suffered first under the rule of the American and British puppet, the Shah of Iran, and are now suffering under the rule of religious fascists.
Article comments
1 - Jonathan Scanlan
Agreed, it is certainly one of my favourites.
2 - amanda
Although the book was intriguing, I did not like the storyline.
3 - a.cody
BSC (Bismarck, ND) assigned this book for the annual campus read. If anyone wants to read my analysis of The Complete Persepolis, you may visit my blog.
4 - xs
d