1st Persepolis Blog

(Question 1)
I haven't read very many comic books in my life but I think I should start reading them more often after reading Persepolis. I think so many other people and I enjoy reading them so much because they are visual and therefore easy to read and understand. I think she told her story in this format because she wanted to visually show the stories she had to tell. The aspect that it's visible gives her the opportunity to show us more the one dimension of a story because we can actually see the expression on a character's face. A conventional memoir spends too much time clarifying details and less time with the action of what's happening when a comic can make it seem more alive.

In class we have been talking about how the text and the images relay on each other. I see the connection in Persepolis. Well, since I have to make my own comic strip of course I was looking for the easiest way to go. And I think it would be easiest and my story would be most clear if I told the same amount of story with text and images.

I have read one other graphic novel before, Maus by Spiegelman. I see similarities between these two graphic novels because first of all, they are both historical. And second they are both told in a series of separate stories. In Maus Arty tells a whole bunch of different stories his father has told him about the Holocaust. And in Persepolis there are different themed chapters that sort of stringed together.

(Question 2)
I love fiction. Harry Potter... The Wizard of Oz... everything else. I think that fiction can teach you morals like the ones you hear in bedtime stories. But the stories that made the most of an impact on me were true stories, like the ones my dad would tell me before I went to bed. Not all of the facts in his stories would be completely true but the fact that it really happened made an impact on me. And same goes for Persepolis, Some things were exaggerated in the story to get a point across but everything in the book was her take on things. And it was powerful for me to see the way she grew up and what it would have been like to be Marjane Satrapi. In other memoirs you have to do a little bit of guess of what things would look like. Persepolis is different because you get to visually see what the author wants you to see and notice about their story. And the drawback of normal memoirs is that you might not be seeing what they want you to see.

(Question 4)
Like I was talking about before the book Persepolis is organized in chapter-like sections. Each section has a little story of Marjane growing up a little. She learns a lesson or something life changing happens, it is always important and relevant. Marjane's Emphasizes she had to learn growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. After hearing about torture from her parents she laughed and played games of "torture" with her friends, and then sections later at a protest she sees the reality of violence and learns to give it a little more respect. The passage of time is represented by the amount of truth she knows. And the drawings add to the narrative by the changes in appearance of all the characters. It does not have to be said that time is passing as the characters change.