Persepolis Reflective Essay

In 1980 when Marji was only 10, the start of the Iran-Iraq war took place, lasting until 1988 with a total of over a million lives lost, making it the longest conventional war of the 20th century. Persepolis is a graphic novel written by Marjane Satrapi. Reasons why Persepolis is a valuable book for high school students include how a graphic novel set up can be a very intriguing way to write a book, the way it portrays that what schools were teaching the children is not always true, and the character development. That all demonstrates how it can be a very exciting reading experience to students.
In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi writes a graphic novel explaining her childhood and her experiences when she was younger. She uses the pictures to convey all the emotions that her and her family felt at times. It
That theme is what the schools teach is not always true. One example is on page 96, when the teacher called all the students worthless. The parents of the students were outraged, including Marji’s mom and dad. All the parents went in to talk to the teacher, and the teacher told them they don’t know how to educate their children, even though the children were just standing up for themselves. The teacher was in the wrong telling the students they were worthless, considering it was not true because every student has potential. On page 144, the teacher says the Islamic republic got rid of the political prisoners, but Marji knew that was not true. Since her uncle was imprisoned, she knew that the number of prisoners went from 3,000 to 300,000. One other example is on page 99, the school gave Mrs. Nasrine’s son a plastic key painted gold, and told him that if he was “lucky enough to die, this key would get him into Heaven”. Of course it would not, and it was just a ploy to get young boys to go to war. It really affected Mrs. Nasrine knowing her son was considering going into war for a plastic