Marjane Sartrapi and the Role of Setting in Her Character

Marjane Sartrapi and the Role of Setting in Her Character

Hamad Alrajhi

Tiffin University 

Marjane Sartrapi and the Role of Setting in Her character

Introduction

Marjane Sartrapi is an Iranian artist, writer and graphic novelist who has depicted her society and the cultural gaps between the west and the east through her novels. No matter how much one denies it, history plays an important role in one’s life. Likewise, the setting of the life of Marjane Sartrapi was full of historic events that shaped up her future. These historic events that occurred in Iran were at the time when she was in her childhood and so, these events had a very intense effect on her work as well as herself. Marjane Sartrapi had the urge to stand out of her community, strive, survive and express herself due to the events that occurred in her past life.

Islamic Revolution and its impact on Marjane

Since Marjane Sartrapi belonged to a westernized family, this cultural behaviour also had an impact on her brought up. But the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979) had a very drastic effect on her and her family as well, but mainly on her. Since she was a child, she picked up on the changes in the community and her home. The revolution was fresh, and the cultural change in Iran conflicted with that of Marjane’s home. A child always learns from his/her home first; before going to a school, or making friends etc. Marjane’s experience was no different.

"You know in the school you have to behave in a way, and in your home another way," Marjane Sartrapi told Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah of the Chicago Tribune

In the graphic novel ‘Persepolis: The Veil’, she has depicted a simple view as she remembered it to be. Since she belonged to a westernized family, the concept of Islamization that too all of a sudden, was a shock for her. The environment and the behaviour of people around her changed. She chose the side of those who were oppressed and took veil as a symbol of being oppressed. She felt herself as an outcast. Later on, moving to Austria away from her family, her home and her country for five years had a significant psychological effect on her. This caused her feelings of minority and elimination to flourish even more.

Marjane and ‘Persepolis: The Veil’

During her time in Vienna, Sartrapi suffered from a serious case of pneumonia. According to her autobiographical graphic novel, she was homeless during that time and had a near death experience from the combination of exposure and pneumonia. This experience may have intrigued a new ambition in her life; an ambition to represent her views and ideas with the power of expression and words.  The graphic novel Persepolis were written in the year 2000, 2003 and 2004, almost six to ten years after she moved to Paris and 20 years after she had first moved away from her home. The setting of the author’s work and her life are same as the graphic novel is based on her life.

Whatever one experiences in his/her childhood makes the ultimate persona of that person in his/her life. Such is the case with the author of ‘The Veil’. Marjane Sartrapi has become an unusual ambassador for her country. She has also become a spokeswoman for greater freedom in her country and a voice against war and for cross-cultural understanding. Her use of graphic novels to tell autobiographical stories with political aspects to them makes her messages exceptionally accessible and affecting while bringing serious attention to the graphic-novel form.

Her work as a graphic novelist can be linked with the life incidents that shaped up her past. Her family was concerned due to her outspoken attitude in school and openly questioning the teachers. This was one of the main reasons her family decided to send her to Europe. She later lived in Paris, France; a place famous for freedom of expression. She related to the work of Art Spiegelman, whose novel ‘Maus’ was about a few Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. The reason she could relate to that work was due to the fact that the westernized families and communities in Iran were treated harshly after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

The views of the community she belonged to were discouraged in the post-revolutionary Iran. Forcefully imposing an opinion and a concept onto someone’s mind should mostly be met with a question and an opposition towards it. Since Marjane was not a girl who would bow down to the customs or traditions of the society, she was seen as an outspoken person who endangered her life and the life of people around her. Being away from her family due to these reasons caused her mind to grab onto the belief in her mind; the belief of freedom.