Reflection of Persepolis

Persepolis was not what I was expecting at all.  After just finishing the book I look back and realize that before I started reading, I had a completely different view of what went on in Iran during this time.  Before, I saw the problems in Iran only in the way the media portrayed them, but now after reading Persepolis, I can see a completely different view point of what actually happened.  From Marjane Satrapi's stand point, we saw a child's perspective of the war.  In a way I think this perspective can be a lot easier to understand.  For instance if we were to read a regular novel about the revolution in Iran, we would most likely be ten times more lost and would not understand it as well.  The graphic novel approach was appropriate because we saw the war in picture form, which put visions in our head of what actually happened.  For instance when they would show the people getting beat up and stabbed during a demonstration, it showed us how violent everything got in Iran.

This young girl in the story goes against all of the stereotypes that have been shared about Iran.  Although we read the story from the child's perspective, we still got the majority of the amount of information we would have gotten if it was written in any other format.  The comics are relevant because they allow you to read the words, see the image, grasp the concept, then move on to the next box.  These boxes can be in any format to get their point across, for example the boxes that take up the entire page.  If you think about it though, these boxes are perfect because it shows you that it is important and gives you the appropriate amount of time to think about why they made the box so big.  Also there are boxes with just pictures in them to allow you to imagine what they would say.  These boxes can vary so much that it adds to the excitement of reading a graphic novel.  I think if this book was not in a comic format that it would be a terrible read, but instead because of the comics I was able to grasp the information they wanted me to get from the book and actually learn something.