Symbols In Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

In the graphic novel Persepolis, the author Marjane Satrapi used many deep and interesting symbols throughout the book to illustrate many turning points in Satrapi’s life in Iran. She was born in Rasht, Iran, on November 22 1969, however she grew up in Tehran in an ordinary middle-class family. She went to school in a private French school which gave her opportunity to be more open-minded than strict Iranians. She lived a peaceful childhood life under the Shah’s power until she was around 11 years old when the Muslim extremists overthrew the Shah. Throughout the novel, Satrapi uses many symbols and rhetoric devices to portray and illustrate different imagery and deeper understanding of the situation. Three of the major symbols in the book were the veil, the golden key and the cigarettes. First of all, the veil is a religious scarf worn by women not in sign of oppression but in sign of freedom. It is usually used by will of the individual but sometimes forced by family rules. In Persepolis however, the Muslim fundamentalists forced and oppressed women to wear the veil. Women were told to cover …show more content…
She first was close to god and wanted to become a prophet, then she wanted to become a revolutionist, then she became a rebel. However, the items that changed her the most were the cigarettes. “With this first cigarette, I kissed childhood goodbye. Now I was a grown-up” (117). This shows the naive thinking of Satrapi and how she perceived cigarettes as a symbol of maturity, and thought that smoking one like an adult were to make her become one. The author also shows how Satrapi forced herself of maturing before her age because of the situation she was in. The war and non-ending oppression towards women did not let her enjoy her childhood as much as a regular child would have enjoyed. She could not have fun anymore which led her to decide to become an adult once in for