Persepolis

I love child narrators because of the craft that has to go into the novel to portray the world through a child’s eyes. Cruelty especially, becomes more horrifying when a child is interpreting it because of the subtlety involved. It was interesting to experience the child narrator through a graphic novel. Marji, however, grew up well educated and had an understanding of what was happening around her. She interpreted the revolution and war in simplified terms as a child might—from conversations and books—and was confident about her own understanding. So when she was exposed to the “truths” of the political climate, her beliefs and childhood innocence was picked away at little by little as the story progressed. 

The way Satrapi expresses the narrator’s understanding of death, visually, ends in darkness. Early in the novel, Marji tells her friend that “when they keep saying someone is on a trip it really means he is dead?” and reveals that she has an understanding of death and a truth that no one else but her seemed to accept (page 48). Like a child, she speaks bluntly without considering how her friend would react. Then the lie is used on her with her uncle Anoosh and she detected it instantly. She was aware of the trick and how she was being treated as a child and continued to question her parents until her father revealed, “The truth is, they have arrested Anoosh,” to which Marji responded with, “I know” (page 67). The phrasing is interesting here because of what Marji actually knows. She hopes that Anoosh isn’t dead, implying that she has no information of his current state. However, when her father tells her and she says, “I know,” it is Satrapi expressing that what Marji knows is “the truth,” no as Anoosh’s fate but that she what is hidden by adults to protect a child’s innocence. The section then ends with a single panel of Marji alone in space, the majority of it inked in black. 

The closest Marji comes to death is on page 142 when she finds her friend’s bracelet in the ruble, that was, “still attached to...I don’t know what…” with the last panel completely in black except for the narrated text. In contrast to Marji’s earlier “I know,” here she states the opposite despite the implication that she is aware of it. I as the reader understood that the bracelet was most likely attached to the wrist, and Marji probably became aware of it, but refused to say so, covering her mouth in that same panel. And in the next panel, she covered her eyes, in a way refusing to look at the truth about death that she once claimed about knowing. Now faced with it, she was the one not accepting it in that moment. 

I am always interested in how children respond to harsh realities through writing, especially since it is a difficult feat to do correctly. Satrapi handles it in increments, tying death and violence with a truth the narrator both seeks and suffers for. Similar to how Marji covers her eyes from the bracelet, in the last panel of the graphic novel, she claims that she should have gone ahead without looking back and seeing her parents. For children, the “knowing” is visual. They can repeat what they hear, much like Marji would, but visually there is no escape from it. It has to be done in the details. For me, having death be shown by the bracelet was more effective than describing a dead body. There is more dread and weight to the small object severely out of place. It’s these details that children latch on to and remember.