the reason for my shame and the revolution is the same

Satrapi's Persepolis functions as a memoir, a document of the revolution, and as a history book. She reveals to a world of readers, the singular perspective of a young girl in an upper-middle class family in Tehran. What the news and other media could never capture, and often willfully obscure, is here shared; a slice of the Islamic Revolution. Though the scope is a bit narrow, as far as how the family's class has allowed them to avoid many of the horrors of war, the reader never the less is bearing witness to an emic experience of Iran before and after.

Satrapi uses plain, striking imagery to depict her story. The background of almost every frame is a solid, opaque black, and the images are comprised of very stark line drawings, much like block prints, without any shading. The pictures almost remind me of fabric designs, the spacing and repetition and simplicity of the shapes are very balanced. There is the same amount of black and white on most pages. The figures are often the same size and therefore similar and relatable over the two page spread when viewed as a group rather than as text. The first two pages use repetition to great effect. On 3, we see a row of little girls all wearing their head scarves and looking exactly the same except their faces, which show their resentment, worry, or resignation. frame three, likewise, shows a group of adult women, all matching, all in the same position, with the same face. We are therefore more surprised to see the mother on page 5 with her short hair, liberal Western clothing, and sun glasses. Her individualism is heightened by the preceding group shots.

Some of the group images seem, even, to interlock, forming Escher-esque patterns on the page. The demonstrators on page 38 are almost abstracted in their iteracy. On page 40, the "many people" killed after Black Friday are pictured, all exactly alike with the same shadowed eyes and gaping mouths. The repetition steals their individuality, robs them of a story, a family, a placehood. Satrapi uses this as a storytelling technique, she reveals the 'everyman' in these depictions. Death is death no matter who you are and war is war no matter what the cause. Here are the many countless sufferers. On page 95, the little school girls are pictured, hitting themselves, all exactly the same shape and size. Again, slight variations in their expression reveal their shock and horror at their own capitulation. These subversive little eye-pops and brow raising animate these otherwise static shots.

The many black spaces in the backgrounds of the frames serve as the chalkboard for Marji's imagination. Whenever she is forced to imagine rather than 'see' an event, it is drawn in white against the otherwise empty black space within the frame. She also uses this technique to depict fantasy, dreams, and things that clearly aren't there. She imagines her grandfather as a prince amidst quivering, wiggling backdrop of swirls (22). This drawing, interestingly, is titled in wobbly cursive, "My grandpa was a prince", the only time we see 'handwritten' script within the book. Marx and God swirl out of a black frame to gaze at one another (13).  On page 34 she uses the black space to illustrate a nightmare, the white outline of a demon is shown curling over her humped body and surprised face.

Marji realizes the complexity of the social system and her part in it relative to others while reading literature by Ali Ashraf Darvishian, "a kind of local Charles Dickens" (33), who wrote about working class children and the hardships they faced. This led to her realization that even in her own radical family, there were important biases that were overlooked...they had a maid! For me, Marji and Mehri's relationship was the most interesting in the book.

Mehri is introduced in a head shot of sorts with an arrow that says, "Her", floating above the text. The word 'her' is read before the accompanying statement, "This is Mehri" (34). The reader sees her as an individual. Someone singled out, the first person in the book and the only to be directly introduced to the reader. Mehri was made to care for Marji at the age of ten, where she is seen haphazardly tossing the baby up into the sky while the baby's eyes bug, swinging and playing herself when she should be caring for Marji, who looks on from the ground, and eating Marji's food. She told Marji scary stories and the illustration of the ensuing nightmare takes up the space of three frames. Marji's feelings toward Mehri were very complicated because she loved her and spent a lot of her most impressionable time with her and they lived like sisters, yet Mehri was an outsider to their family bubble. This narrative about Mehri struggles with the guilt of the power dynamic which was inherent in their relationship.

After watching the mother fight so hard as a revolutionary for equality and democracy, it is hard to believe she keeps a maid, and has since the girl was merely eight. Is the narrative from Mehri's mother, "She will eat well at your house" supposed to console the reader? The class destinction is further destinguished by the last exchange on page 35 where the two girls are lying on the rug together, transcribing a love letter to the neighbor. Mehri lounges dreamily, orating, while Marji lies on her belly, intently writing. She says, "I often talk about you to my sister", to which Marji asks, "Which sister?" "You!", Mehri answers. At the bottom of the frame are the words, "I was very devoted". This is such an interesting phrase and placement because the reader would like to believe that she is referring to Mehri, but she is actually referring to the act of writing weekly love letters to the neighbor.

Satrapi's illustrations depict many of the horrible acts of war that are described by characters in the book. She shows, for instance, a dismembered body on a black back ground. The caption is very frank, "In the end, he was cut to pieces" (52). The illustration shows the body laying out in pieces, but the cut edges are straight lines, the inside of the body seems empty and hollow, and there is no blood. The parts look rather more like the parts of a ceramic doll with the joints taken out. Her depictions allow the reader to 'see' the atrocity without having to turn away from it. She is honest, but restrained. The childlike representations lessen the horror without shirking her duty as an honest storyteller.

I loved the interaction with the grandma right before she left Iran! So sweet and unexpected! "Grandma how do you have such round breasts at your age?" "Every morning and night I soak them in a bowl of ice water for ten minutes." "I smelled my grandma's bosom. It smelled good. I'll never forget that smell" (150). The body is usually only discussed in literature when it is being eroticized and I'm always excited when it is acknowledged in other ways.