Persepolis Analysis

“If you educate a man you educate an individual, however, if you educate a woman you educate a whole family,” was a proverb made popular by Dr. James Aggrey, a renowned Ghanaian philosopher. This proverb was a pioneer in a time when the education of women was unheard of as men dominated opportunities given by education. Most People underestimate women, and do not expect them to achieve what men are perceived to do naturally. For example, in Athol Fugards’ My Children! My Africa!, Thami states that “Women cannot do the same jobs as men because they’re not the equals of us” (3). This is not true, yet women must work harder to become educated to be held and be regarded at the same standards as men. To become equals to men, education formulates
Knowledge is defined by the awareness gained by an experience or situation. In Persepolis, Marjane desperately wants to be seen as an educated individual and laughs along with her parents and grandmother about the joke the word “martyr” has become. She discusses her search for knowledge when she was a child in her caption saying “I realized then that I didn’t understand anything. I read all the books I could” (32). Marjane constantly seeks for ways to understand the events that are unfolding around her. Listening to the stories of her family members and their conversations, her knowledge of her surroundings is “pooled” through these experiences and books she read to help create her own opinions. Knowledge is also pursued through storytelling. In Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie shows the Little Seamstress searching for knowledge, when she says “About those books of his—what if we stole them?” (89). Sijie uses the em dash to exemplify the Little Seamstress search for knowledge. It creates a strong break in her sentence, emphasizing the crime she is about to commit for her pursuit of knowledge. Each women’s pursuit of knowledge allows them to become potentially helpful to others and a reliable source of