Persepolis Gender Roles Essay

If you were handed a book, knowing that the content inside discusses war, death, rape, terrorism, bombings, and torture, how shocked would you be to find out that a ten year old wrote the book? Who would believe that a little girl could so vividly describe her relatives being whipped and burnt? Lessons that not even adults have learned, this girl has experienced, but has also shared her stories with the world. Marjane Satrapi, the main character in the graphic novel Persepolis, demonstrates gender roles, religion, and social classes, through drawings and words. Right from the start of the book, Marjane Satrapi gives an example of gender roles. She explains her younger self’s view on the veil. “Then came 1980: The year it became obligatory to wear the veil at school. We didn’t really like to wear the veil, especially since we didn’t understand why we had to.” she states on page three. On page 75, Marjane draws a picture of a
Page 37 shows a very frustrated Marjane on the bottom left image. She questions her father, “But is it her fault that she was born where she was born??? Dad, are you for or against social classes?” Marjane has heard her father discuss his hatred for social classes, but when she sees her father not speak up when their maid is turned down by a man because she is part of a lower social class, she’s extremely upset. Parents are people that typically have a big impact on their child’s life, and influence them greatly, but if a child cannot understand what they believe, this becomes an internal struggle. The picture shown above represents a scale and how society views upperclassmen are considered worth more; around lower class and upper class are words commonly used to describe the two classes. Tying this picture back to the book, the Satrapi’s maid is worth less because she’s from a poor area; that’s also the reason she’s a maid in the first