Life In Yop City Analysis

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis illustrates how living life in a state of war can cause people to resort to destructive behaviors that dehumanize others, particularly women. In Marguerite Abouet’s Aya: Life in Yop City, the character Aya represents the modern women who desires independence and values herself and her goals. Here, she is presented as distinct from her carefree friends who represent the character of how young women should act. Marjane in her teenage years also represents a young teenager trying to be her own person amidst a society that’s gradually degrading the status of women. The conflict presented in both Persepolis and Aya: Life in Yop City shows that the protagonists live in a society that is too restrictive for women, but for different reasons therefore they are not strictly comparable.
The struggles woman face is clearly …show more content…
In the final chapter of Aya a major conflict arises when Koffi announces that he’s taking a second wife. There’s a shift amongst the wives of the village who up till this point showed no signs that they challenged the way things are. The debate between the wives and the husbands over the second wife situation clearly shows how the problem of the women not having a say in the marriage is unfair as his wife was clearly against the matter. Koffi gets the men of the village to rally around him after complaining about his wife disagreeing they state that Koffi ‘lost the pants’ in the marriage years ago and as a result his wife is acting like a white woman. In the end the argument the wives come up with to against the issue is to bring up the fact that Alphonsine is the one supporting the family financially so therefore she should have a say of what goes on in their home because she’s the breadwinner. Koffi relents when his wife threatens to leave which settles the issue and is seen as small victory for the wives of the