Summative Blogpost - Isa F.

Source

        This book club rotation, I have read two books, Maus and Persepolis. This blogpost is based on the book Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. Below is one historical and one literary analysis question (s):



Historical Context:


What is the cultural and educational background of the author and how did this background influence the book?  In what ways do the events in the books reveal evidence of the author’s world view?

Marjane was born in 1969, in a city called Rasht located in Iran. She was the only daughter, her father worked as a engineer and her mother occupied a job as a clothing designer. She grew up in a different town, named Tehran. 
Also, her family was communist and socialist, therefore they would be involved in the movements all over Iran. While growing up, she, as in Marjane, witnessed many different political, economic, and social differences and conflicts. She was only a child when she started experiencing things such as the fall of Shah, and the beginning years of the Iran-Iraq war.In 1938, Marjane's family moved to Vienna, Austria in order to escape the horrible pain from the Iranian regime. She and her family lived there, but she went back to Iran for college, where she met a man named Reza. They got married at age 21, unfortunately, divorced three short years after.
 After that happened,she continued with school and studied at the School of Fine Arts in Tehran Islamic Azad University, obtaining a Master's Degree in Visual Communication. Pursuing her dream, she moved to France (where she currently lives now) and in the present, is an author and illustrator for children's books.

  I think that this has affected Marjane Satrapi and her book Persepolis because the proper book is an autobiography graphic novel of Marjane's childhood, up to the first years of her adulthood. This book has concepts and ideas which incorporate the way she saw the world when she was a child, also because the book is about the time during the Iran-Iraq war. It displays a lot of emotion because it's all about a little girls childhood and what she believes in. The real evidence effects the author's world-view because information held inside the pages of this book, are the true feelings of desire, passion, sentiment that Marjane felt while going through this, as a small child.



Literary Analysis:

Is the book’s structure chronological or does it move back and forth between past and present?  Does the author use a single (first or third person) viewpoint or shifting points of view?  Why might the author have chosen to tell the story this way and how does it influence the reader’s understanding?

Source

To start, the book's structure chronological order, but it is placed in the past because it is an autobiography. Marji, is the name of the main character (Marjane), the author uses first person viewpoint because it is all about her childhood and her story, therefore, she made is herself talking about her beliefs and her thoughts.
The way the author chose to tell this story, incorporating the idea of Marji talking to god, and just the intention that the author has is what impacts the reader. She doesn't use an adult, she uses a 10 year old girl, which makes the reader think, how can this be happening? The reader, depending on the age, sees the book in a different way then someone else. Certain aspects affect one person more than the other, which also leads to discussions and conversations.