The Role Of Time In Persepolis By Marjane Satrapi
In the book Persepolis, time has a very important role. Before I get to the role of time, I’d like to introduce, or give the reader a background about Persepolis. Persepolis is a book about Marjane Satrapi. She is known as Marji by close family and friends. This book depicts her life, her many struggles, and how she faces adversity. Time is developed using perspective and line and panel transitions.
Firstly, Time can be considered a theme. I think it can be considered a theme because not only does time play a very big part in Marji's life, such as during the Iranian revolution. From her perspective, most of the book is focused around the Iranian revolution. During her childhood, Marjane believed time was moving way too slow. She wanted to become an adult very quickly. During her adulthood however Marjane found out that there is no rush to becoming an adult. As an adult she had a hard life, she slept on benches, got bronchitis and became depressed. She even tried to commit suicide. There were 3 perspective in this book. Marjane as a child, Marjane as an adult and Marjane as a narrator/author. As she has grown she has become wiser, however she has always seen room for improvement. Marjane's family is also included. I believe without her family, there wouldn’t be a real background story. Marjane's family told the readers many facts about Iran at the time, that a 10 year old Marjane wouldn’t know. Perspective also develops the theme because of the age differences. At 10 years old, MArjane didn’t know much. She basically listened to the TV and repeated whatever the TV said, well this backfired. Her father once got mad when she said “on the TV, reports say 99. 9% of people voted for the islamic regime. ” Marjane's dad, Ebi got upset and said that people just watch TV and believe what they pull out of their butts. This differs from an adult Marjane. Marjane no longer goes off the television and Marjane and her dad get their information from the radio. This shows how time has developed Marjane. At 10 Marjane didn’t understand they could lie on TV, they could of course lie on the radio, however Ebi trusted the radio more than the TV since not every station of the radio was being listened to by either the Islamic Regime, the shah, or SAVAK (secret police).
The theme time is also developed by aspect to aspect transitions. An example of aspect to aspect transitions in the book Persepolis is when Marjane give the reader aside to explain the new look of men and women under the Islamic Regime, which can be found on page 75. This shows the difference between a fundamentalist and a modernist/progressive. This type of transition effectively freezes time to establish a mood, feeling or emotion of a scene. This made the reader choose either to join the fundamentalist view or modern view. This can be decided on many options, considering religion or what you think is right.
In conclusion, in the book Persepolis, time is manipulated by many aspects of the story. Time is manipulated the most in my opinion by perspective and transitions. The book Persepolis was a very good book, it taught me, as an American about the Iranian revolution and how it was to be an Iranian during this time. I would recommend this book to everyone that I know. Persepolis has more of a meaning than just what appears on the surface. The many perspectives of Marjane make this book very interesting and seeing how she becomes less ignorant throughout the book as she gets older shows me that as you get older you get wiser. The transitions were also amazing. The transitions really made this book an interesting graphic novel. Most life stories aren't graphic novels, however Persepolis defies this rule and many others of a normal book.
