Persepolis: Close Analysis

"The Revolution is like a bicycle. When the wheels don't turn, it falls. And so went the revolution in my country" (10).

Persepolis: The Story of a childhood by Marjane Satrapi is a book based on Satrapi's own childhood while growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Cultural Revolution in 1980, as well as a plethora of other revolutions in the early years of her life. Throughout Persepolis Marjane writes about the revolutions and how they always fail. She compares the revolutions to a bicycle to show how a revolution needs full support of the population to succeed.

Satrapi's message throughout the book is very simple to understand; without full support of an entire group, a revolution will never succeed. The entire population needs to be behind a single cause if it is to overpower the current system and start something new. This was such a problem in Iran during Marji's childhood, because for every revolution there were people in favor of revolution, and those who would rather keep everything the way it is. During the first cultural revolution in 1980, "The year it became obligatory to wear the veil at school" (3). Right from the start of this revolution, the people were divided over this act of covering a woman's hair. "Everywhere on the streets there were demonstrations for and against the veil" (5). Another example of a disunited people was when the war had started in Iran against Iraq.

"There were two kinds of women. The fundamentalist woman. The Modern women. You showed your opposition to the regime by letting a few strands of hair show. There were also two sorts of men. The Fundamentalist Man: beard, shirt hanging out. The Progressive Man: shaved, with out without mustache, shirt tucked in. Islam is more or against shaving" (75).

Even when the country needed the full support of the population, people still decided to rebel against the common ideals of Iran and the Islamic religion.

Although the revolutions never achieved the unity necessary to succeed, they did make many attempts to sway the population. One such example was when Marji's Father was taking photos of the revolutionaries turning dead victims into Martyrs. Her father explained what he saw, "People came out carrying the body of a young man killed by the army. He was honored like a martyr. A crowd gathered to take him to the Baheshte Zahra cemetery" (31). They tried to rally support by raising these victims to martyr status and persuading the people. Also on page 31-32, they take the body of a man who died of cancer, and not only do they blame his death on their King but they persuade his wife to protest with them.

The government also made attempts to unify the people. Since regular actions did not come close to swaying the people, they had to start taking extreme actions. When girls were walking around alone, they were confronted by men or women who tried to scare them into following the new laws of the revolution. This was especially true for those who weren’t wearing the veil properly or even at all. These men used force and foul language to scare the women, Marji’s mother Ebi told her story to Marji and her father, “Two fundamentalist bastards…they insulted me. They said that women like me should be pushed up against a wall and fucked. And then thrown in the garbage” (74). This was very hard for many women to deal with. Another form of intimidation tactic were fundamentalist women who walked around and punished young girls for breaking the rules. Marji explains the experience when she was yelled at by these women, “Their job was to put us back on the straight and narrow by explaining the duties of Muslim women. ‘Why are you wearing those ‘punk’ shoes? What punk shoes? Those! But these are sneakers! Shut up! They’re punk” (133). Even for something as unimportant as wearing the wrong shoes, the women in this book were forced to comply with the government’s beliefs for fear of bodily harm.

There were also others who didn't stand in a group to aid the revolution, but suffered alone, even giving up their lives for the cause of the revolution. On page 51 is shown the horrible torture of a man who will not confess the hiding place of his comrades and in the end, "they burned him with an iron" (51). Another example of someone who died for the revolution was Marji's uncle Anoosh, who was a supporter of the revolution. He was put into jail multiple times, and in the end was executed under the accusation of being a "Russian Spy" (70).

In Persepolis, there are many people who are both strongly in favor and strongly opposed to the revolutions taking place. With the many different reasons for each revolution to exist, it became very hard for any of them to attain enough popular support for their new ideal to become a reality. Marjane Satrapi wanted to show people how hard it was living in a world full of so much adversity, and that uniting under a common goal was as futile as trying to pedal a bike with wheels that don't turn. She does a great job of conveying this message throughout Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood.