Comparative Analysis Of Harper Lee’s Novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ And Marjane Satrapi’s Novel ‘Persepolis’
Harper Lee’s novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, and Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel ‘Persepolis’, explores the conflict between personal and public worlds through the characters and the societies that they live in. Although both stories explore different issues, both exhibit a female protagonist’s journey of maturation due to the circumstances of their segregated societies. Both authors emphasize the struggle of an individual’s opinion as opposed to the conformity of the oppressed society. Lee and Satrapi both employ a young female protagonist to narrate the majority of the novels which provide us with an innocent and naïve perspective.
Both novels present a young girl coming from a town of prejudice and preconception growing up to challenge the public norms. In Chapter 12 of ‘Mockingbird’, Scout asks very bluntly to Calpurnia, “… what’s rape, Cal?” which reveal that Scout is unaware of what exactly Tom Robinson is being accused of. When Calpurnia brushes the question off abruptly and tells Scout to ask Atticus with her excuse of, “He can explain it better than I can”, leaving us to infer that Calpurnia believes that it best for a parent to converse the topic of rape with their own child. Scout’s innocent persona not only sparks an interest in a mature and sensitive topic but also as to why the townspeople of Maycomb believe the Ewells over Tom Robinson. Before she asks Calpurnia what rape is, he says, “Well, if everybody in Maycomb knows what kind of folks the Ewells are they’d be glad to hire Helen…” What Scout does not understand, is that Maycomb is segregated by race and as a result, prejudice is prominent. Most of the townspeople do not take the Ewells seriously because of their taking everything for granted attitude and how they live off other’s wealth but she is surprised to find that the Ewells are given more privilege and respect than the Robinsons.
Likewise in ‘Persepolis’, the narrator of the story is exposed to the harsh reality of the public world. On page 107, all of the panels are drawn with heavy graphic weight, thus suggesting the sudden clash between the personal and public worlds. The scene involves Marji and her family is being suddenly interrupted due to wailing sirens when they were out partying. The wailing sirens bring fear to the guests at the party, but most of all, Marji’s aunt. In the panels, she is shown to quickly pass her newborn child into Marji’s arm and then to run off, abandoning her child. Marji eventually realizes that this situation was atypical for the society that she lived in but she still has her doubts on how a mother could abandon her child. In the last panel, the voiceover, “Since that day, I’ve had doubts about the so-called ‘maternal instinct’,” tells us that Marji comes to the realization that self-preservation is a person’s first natural instinct in Iran. Although Marji has already started to develop from a young child’s innocence, she still finds it shocking from her aunt’s response and because of that, we catch a glimpse of her purity. The contrast between Scout and Marji’s experiences effectively explore the clash between their personal and public worlds.
‘Mockingbird’ and ‘Persepolis’ together utilize the theme of gender roles to emphasize the conflict between personal and public worlds. In the introductory chapter of Lee’s novel, Scout describes Maycomb as a sluggish town with old-fashioned values. She comments on how the “Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft tea-cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.” This quote tells us that Maycomb has very strict views on how each gender should act, describing the men as well-groomed and hardworking whereas the women are described as dainty and delicate. The expectation of how ladylike Scout should be is challenged by her outgoing and bubbly personality. Her character is quite different from what Maycomb considers to be feminine and comments about her behavior and attire are made throughout the novel, claiming she should be more like a ‘lady’.
As the story progresses, we are shown that the people of Maycomb are fixated on their racist and prejudiced scrutiny, despite the hardships. The confinement of how a woman should dress is also expressed in ‘Persepolis’ where a veil covering their hair should be worn. Towards the middle of the book, Marji’s mother goes through a traumatic incident because she does not wear the veil. In the 4th panel on page 74, she describes what two fundamentalist men threatened her with, before raping her. The panel also utilizes heavy graphic weight showing how the public world is negatively influencing the society. The 3rd panel on the next page can be contrasted with that because of its lack of graphic weight. This proposes that in Marji’s speech bubble, we can see her raw thought instead of an apathetic and neutral narratorial voice. Marji questions the logic of the fundamentalists where they believe that because “women’s hair got men excited”, they should wear a veil. With this logic, we can conclude that they are saying that men cannot control their urges and that instead of controlling men, their answer is to suppress women’s freedom of choice further.
The characters in ‘Mockingbird’ and ‘Persepolis’ undergo conflict due to the faults of the public world. Both books have a running parallel of a young female protagonist experiencing conflict between her personal and public worlds.
