” Quotes like such make the reader feel for Marjane and influence the mood of the story onto them. “We found ourselves veiled and separated from our friends… and that was that. For example, in the passage ‘The Veil’, there is a minimal amount of smiles and happy expressions on the characters and Satrapi is quick to express her feelings and thoughts on the societal changes in a reasonable yet pessimistic fashion. The visuals in conjunction with Satrapi’s tone and linguistic choices help emphasise these tones. Giving the book a mood appropriately described as ‘depressing’ and ‘bleak’. The colours, well in this case, lack of colour, exhibits to the reader that life at this point for Marjane and society perhaps wasn’t the happiest and was quite dull. The most conspicuous being the black and white format of the novel. The mood and tone is portrayed clearly from the outset of the book. Marjane was never short on giving her opinion and had plenty to say about the new changes and this is due to her nature and how her parents had raised her. This made Marjane question reality and this is highlighted in the book when Marjane says “I really didn’t know what to think about the veil, deep down I was very religious but as a family, we were very modern and avant-garde”. This was no doubt a lot of changes for a ten year old like Marjane who was also under the pressure of her parent’s strong policial beliefs. The end result was the replacement of an Authoritarian monarchy with a theocratic republic. This saw supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini organize large protests which ended in Khomeini becoming the new leader of Iran. The Islamic revolution consisted of Islamist revolutionaries who opposed the western secular policies of the authoritarian Shah of Iran named Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. During this period, Iran’s largest revolution had commenced which is referred to as the ‘Islamic Revolution’.

The book takes place in Tehran, Iran during the 1980s. In the passage ‘The Veil’ we only really hear from Marjane however as the book progresses her family and other significant characters begin to be more present in the dialogue. With ‘Persepolis’ being an autobiography it is a given that it’s predominately from Marjane’s perspective and the book follows how she feels and how she reacted to the societal changes at the time. This allows the novel to differentiate from being a children’s book to a book ideal for young adults while still capturing 10 year old Marjane’s mischievous and lively spirits. ‘Persepolis’ is written in the first person from Marjane’s perspective as she was 10 years old however the narration, while still being from Marjane is from her in her adulthood which brings an extent of maturity and wisdom to the overall book.

Persepolis book 1