Persepolis 2

A number of people noted how it was easy to just pass right on to Persepolis 2 without really realizing it, because of the way Satrapi’s stories flowed so well together. I agree, but I also found that there was a distinct difference in her tone throughout the second story. First and foremost there was far less of her childhood finger pointing and statement making that I thought very aptly illustrated her sense of youthful idealism and willingness to believe whole-heartedly in causes such as the Revolution. Persepolis 2 was, even in the title, the story of a life in turmoil alongside a suffering country; the fact that she and Iran are physically separated does not detract from the same sort of parallelism that characterized “The Story of a Childhood.” From the very first page it was obvious that her move to Europe in hopes of this renewing freedom was also representative of its own sort of idealism: from the tone of the narrator’s voice, it’s clear that the ideas and images of greener pastures were, really, ideas and not reality: “I had come here with the idea of leaving a religious Iran for an open and secular Europe…” Satrapi’s story in Austria was far bigger than homesickness, although that was obviously an element. Once again, from the first frame, there is already a pervading sense of isolation and foreignness both on her part and that of the new country. Because of Persepolis I, it was hard to really read Satrapi as the foreigner in this second story- it really felt like Europe was what was foreign. Her childhood had been so defined by Iran that it was at first difficult to understand her place in this country so different from her home and the story of the Revolution. (Just a brief note that I enjoyed how Satrapi’s sense of humor came into these circumstances of being an outsider and so obviously not “fitting” in on the inside or the outside: on pg. 20, in the sixth frame, she’s walking to the store in a full ski suit and looks like an astronaut compared to the very European-looking woman passing her. She says, “I felt like I was on the slopes of Innsbruck, close to my friends,” when really she’s nowhere close to them, and the ski suit sort of symbolizes that.) But her home followed her to Europe in a lot of ways, because had it not been for the intense idea of home, culture, and origins brought about by childhood in Iran and influenced by the Revolution, her assimilation would most likely have been easier and not as burdened by guilt. The theme of guilt was new to Persepolis 2: her perspective on home, identity, and conflict are widened and once again ultimately are defined by the Revolution. It seemed like the conflict at home was the reason for her guilt, because she left before being able to really form her own perceptions of the events and feel the effects for herself. That sense of “unfinished business” is, in my opinion, largely the cause of her alienation and lack of identity. One of the blog prompts has to do self-destructiveness vs. the destructiveness of war, and I think that Satrapi’s struggle with identity is perhaps a not as obvious result of the war in Iran. It seemed that it was because she left when she did that her identity with her own country was not fully formed yet, so it makes sense that it would be so difficult to start all over in such a drastically new place, and all alone on top of that. On pg. 39, in the height of her punk style, she imagines herself running away from the outline of her parents, highlighting the inner conflict between the two parts of her: the part that is loyal to home, but who is also attempting to be the free person her parents sacrificed so much for her to be but who she doesn’t really know how to be…When she leaves at the end of Persepolis 2, there is not the same tone of sadness and grief at departure because she understands more, having gone back and seen the circumstances for herself. As she says in the last frame, freedom really does come at a cost, no matter where she is in her life or what her relationship to that freedom is. This isn’t something that is revealed to the reader just at the very end of this story, but rather throughout both part 1 and 2. Neither would have been possible without Iran, to end on the idea of parallelism once again.