Graphic Novel And The Age Of Transition: A Survey And Analysis

After coming to America, Marjane Satrapi wrote a memoir of her childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. As a writer, one must have an idea of who they want their intended audience to be. Based off that intended audience, the writer then determines what style their literature should be published in. Different audiences are appealed to different styles of literature.For instant, a child would read a book with few words and colorful pictures, while an older adult would prefer to read a book with nothing but words. When Satrapi wrote Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, it was published in the style of a graphic novel. After analyzing the novel, one can conclude that Satrapi chose to write in the style of a graphic novel to fully express
her childhood memory to her intended audience of young adults.
A graphic novel is simply an extended comic book adults.
In "The Graphic Novel and the Age of Transition: A Survey and Analysis," Stephen Tabachnick states that graphic novels are an adaption to try and keep traditional literature alive. Now in today's society, most people would rather go to the movies or watch a play instead of picking up a book and reading the words. Within a graphic novel there are both words and pictures, which combines the traditional idea of novels and the visual idea of movies and plays. Graphic novels also have some advantages over both drama plays and movies that may appeal to the readers more. With a graphic novel, the reader can read at their own pace and feel free to go back whenever they please. As for a movie you can't watch at own your pace due to other viewers. Graphic novels also have an advantage over plays in theatre. An author can make their characters look any way they want them, while in a drama play a director is limited to what their characters can look like (Tabachnick). Satrapi knew that as an author that she had to make the novel appealing to her readers. With today's society being hooked into the visuals of life, she incorporated pictures into her memoir to attract the intended audience of the novel. With the style of the graphic novel she is making an adaptation to traditional writing by incorporating pictures for the visual experience for her readers. Satrapi was able to draw her own pictures in this novel, giving her the power
to show her audience the characters and settings the way she wanted them to see.
In Katherine Bucher and M.
Manning's "Bringing Graphic Novels into a Schools Curriculum," they explain how young adults are the main audience of this style of literature. Today's young adults have grown up around flat screen televisions and various type of videos games. This generation of young adults are more visual than the older generation of adults that wouldn’t mind reading a traditional styled novel. Graphic novels have turned into the most popular and favored style of literature for the generations of young adult. The way graphic novels deliver the novels message is easier to understand with visual since the young adults are use to visual entertainment. Based on such the large interest of graphic novels in the young adult generations, most people would love to see more graphic novels in the school curriculum for middle school, high school, and basic English classes in college (Bucher and Manning). Persepolis is a memoir based on Satrapi's childhood during the Islamic Revolution. The novel includes parts that were about politics. In today's society some of the young adult generation and politics aren't compatible. They either don’t care much for politics or they just simple don’t understand politics. With Satrapi using pictures to further explain the meaning of her words, the readers of her memoir would have a better understand the actual meaning of the words. Not only with the political aspects, but throughout the whole novel. In the veil section of the novel, Satrapi
talks about her mixed feelings of being forced to wear the veil. She has a picture drawn with one side of her dressed how a modern western American would, while the other side of her is her wearing the veil (Satrapi, 6). With this picture, the meaning of the words are better explained as you can see how she is confused as to the type of person she wants to be.