Harroop's Persepolis: Week 5

Mirrors by Sylvia Plath:

• Through out the book I think Marjane is always searching for her identity and she does not figure out who she is and who she wants to be. I found a poem called "Mirrors"by Sylvia Plath, and its very beautiful and it links a lot to Persepolis. When she we look into the mirror we usually just look to see how we look but sometimes when we are unhappy with ourselves we try to find the kind of person we are, and looking into a mirror represents this. Marjane also does this in persepolis on page 291 after she falsely accuses a man of harassing her, and her grandmother yells at her with disappointment. In this last panel she looking at the mirror at herself because her grandmother yelled at her for the first time but I think it represents that she is looking at herself and searching for her identity and looking at why she did that because shes against rebellion and is someone who does not believe in the guardians of the revolution and the way the control everything.

Snippets:

• On page 317 we start to that Marjane is realizing who she is and is starting to find her true idenitity right after her marriage with Reza which is strange because after your marriage people like to be happy at least the first day but shes "I had become "A married women," I had conformed to society , while I had always wanted to remain within the margins. In my mind, "a married women"wasn't like me. The picture in that panel is of Marjane starring at the reader behind bars like a prisoner which is exactly what she did not want she wanted to step away from what everyone did and wanted freedom but instead she did exactly what she did not want and that is to do what society wants people to do. Her marriage might have been the only way she could confront herself with what she really wanted in life. I repeated this quotation because I think this shows something about her idenitity.
• Somtimes the kind of hair we have shows the kind of person we are or sometimes we change are hair to define a change in our life or to start out fresh, But in Persepolis this happens a number of times to show the changes which Marjane faces and will face her veil represented something different but the style of her haircut shows a major a change which occured in her life. Like on page 241 her hair is messy and down but then when she recovers at the hospital her hair is tied up as if Satrapi is representing that she is put together now and is better. Then on pages 273 when she tries to kill herself she has her down and it does not look to good like on page 241 when she is in Viennal; however, her hairstyle changes again on page 274 when she wants to start out fresh. This is a representation of why the medium of a graphic novel is so interesting because if this was a novel it would be harder to say that she changed her hairstyle again to start out fresh but in a graphic novel she just has a change and she can show it with a different haircut.
  

Harroop's Persepolis: Week 4

Something to think about:

Persepolis has many statements which many people whether in Iran or Canada can relate to and people of any age. She is someone who has been through a lot and has the wisdom to show people the bigger life changing questions. In class when we talk about questions like "where does our identity come?", they really make me think and I honestly don't even know. Most of are thinking is a lot like our parents some of it from our friends and some from the media. We become the person the world wants us to and try our best to become like the environment we are surrounded by. But Marjane is not like that she can not change the fact that she is Iranian who thinks like a European, and why should she change herself to become one if that is who she is. This really made me think because so many people hide themselves to become someone else and I know I do that so how do we know who we really are, are we all just the same. If we like the same type of story then maybe we are not different from anyone else. So throught out the process of reading persepolis I thought of these ideas.

Literary Features:

• This may be stretching it a bit to far but I think that the Marjanes grandmother and uncle anoosh are foils for each other because they both are mentioned but Marjane as being dead by the end of the book and on the page 341 she mentions that her grandmother died two years later. But she could have left that and made a happy ending when Marjane leaves for Austria once again. On page 341 the last line she says is "freedom had a a price", and for her to get her freedom she could not be with her grandmother before she past away and when uncle anoosh died in order for him to gain freedom he had to die as well and Marjane could not be there with him when he died. They both had similar characteristics like they both loved Marjane, they both loved rebelling and both wanted freedom. So this may not be true and maybe its just something that I am stretching to far but it seems to me that they both are very similar.
  

Snippets:

• On page 286 I was really surprised with Marjane's behavior when she blames an innocent man of harrasment which is something which the officers in Iran take very seriously and all of a sudden Marjane to the reader is no longer a hero who stands up for herself but becomes a coward by trying to hide herself from being arrested. This is something which is completely devastating for the reader to see especially because most comic strips the reader sees themselves looking at the protagonist and wishing they had there courage but here we see Marjane blaming a poor man for no reason at all.
• On page 317 we see Marjane being prisoned in her new home and in her dialogue shes says "I was already sorry! I had suddenly become a married woman, I had conformed to society while I had always wanted to remail in the margins", so she became exactly what she did not want and that was become exactly what her society wanted her to and now she was trapped with someone forever but she is someone who wants freedom so her being prisoned juxaposoes with her personality because she would never be trapped in anything and would strive to be free.
  

Harroop's Persepolis: Week 3

Snippets:

• In my opinion I think that Satrapi tries to show major changes which occur in Marjane's life with the type of hair and veil she has in that panel, and everytime a change occurs in her life her hair changes but when she is in iran the style of her veil changes. This may not neccissarily be true but it seems like it signifies the changes which occur in her life. But this is generally the kind of change which people choose because when someone is looking for change the usually change their style of hair. This occurs everytime there is a change. On page 153 Marjane's veil is black and it seems like it represents something wrong which will occur in Marjanes life soon a lot like foreshadowing something bad which is about to happen this also occurs another time on page 133 when she is about to get arrested by the guardians she is wearing a black veil. Then on page 155 and she is in vienna her hair style is quite different and this is when she enters another place which completely changes her life, and there are many more panels in which her hair changes when she there is a change which occurs in her life.

Literary Feature:

• The literary feature which I found is a foil. The grandmother and uncle anoosh are a foil for each other because Marjane loves her grandmother and her uncle a lot and they love her the most. She is not aware that she will be seperated from her uncle and her grandmother by their death. It may be a coincidence that after the seperation between her uncle and her grandmother she went on a trip to another place, like on page 77 and then on the last page when Marjane leaves for Vienna again she is seperated from her grandmother. Uncle anoosh and her grandmother are extremely important people in her life which is why they are foils for each other and they both die at the end of the book.

Class Act:

• I think the discussion we had in class about how important the medium of a comic strip is. We also talked about how the comic strip form was like an outsider and whoever owned comic strips was odd. So it is possible that Marjane chose the form of a comic strip by keeping in mind that she has felt like an outsider most of her life. She also writes a lot of short sentences with very little detail which may symbolize that she is trying to let the readers connect to her story.

Harroop's Panels about "The Road Not taken" by Robert Frost

The image i made is suppose to represent the poem the road not taken by Robert Frost. Although it may not be very creative but it shows both aspects of the literature: Persepolis and The road not taken. The reason for why the characters have no faces is to show that there is no particular person who the poem is about but it represents in anyone and anyone can be in that situation. Satrapi also shows this in her graphic novel on page 102, like those soldiers anyone can be in the place where one person has two choose between two different paths in life which Robert Frost writes about in his poem. I actually illustrated characters like the ones Satrapi shows in her graphic novel and showed one person going on a path which wasnt taken very often and other people taking the one most people prefer to take.

Harroop's Post- Week Two

Class act:

• I think the discusses in class really helped and there were a lot of points that we talked about which were confusing and hard to understand
• I think there is a lot of things which are important in a graphic novel and every section of the book is important
• In Satrapi's interview she mentioned that she didn't add detail for a reason, and she wanted people to be able to connect with Marjane and feel like they could have been in her position and often that's how I felt

Feedback:

What Mr.Mcguigan Said:

• Mr.Mcguigan added a lot of comments on other people's ideas and expanded on them which I found really useful because it helps me understand the story better

What peers said:

• I really liked Arpreet's idea of how on page 19 her teacher tells her that shah is chosen by god and then on page 44 Marjane says that shah is chosen by god her teacher tells them to rip out all the information, even though she is the one who told her that shah is chosen by god, so this represents how like in 1984 the party trys to get rid of all the information by making it seem like it doesn't exist anymore
• I am not sure who mentioned this was on page 144 when she takes a stand, this shows the rebellious side of her because that is something she grew up seeing
• also Arpreet mentioned a part on page 197 when Marjane gets upset and realizes her true identity and says that she is an Iranian and shes proud of it and even though she has moved away she can't forget that who she really is and that's a part of her she can never let go of or forget

Literary Feature Hunt:

• I found a motif in Persepolis and that is of a her veil and without a veil when she is wearing her black veil it represented something bad about to happen like on page 132 when she gets in trouble from women's branch some how gets out of it and theres always some different style of veil like on page 124 when one of her relatives is dying she wears a different style of veil pattern

Snippets:

• I thought on page 132 where in a way Marjane is smuggling the kim wilde tape and I thought it was interesting how the author shows them having two heads and this reminded me of the indian god who is evil and has many heads

Harroop's Post- Week one

Class Act:

• I think the class period on wednesday was very productive and I really liked all the points people in the class pointed out
• Discussing and explaining the sections in the book really helped
• Something I need to remember: the author of a graphic novel makes every decision for a reason and every little detail counts

Feedback:

What Mr.Mcguigan said:

• I think Mr.Mcguigan did a really good job at explanding the ideas that other people made and elaborated on the same idea only making a stronger explanation for what the author may intend to say
• I really like the idea Mr.Mcguigan briefly mentioned that, god stops appearing in marjane's life as she gets older and I thought like a any person they first consider their religion being a huge part of their life but as someone gets older they start to drift away from their religion and start to think about other parts of their life and forget about their religious side

Things Peers said:

• I really like the idea that Gabe pointed out about how on P.43 how the devil frames them and then Mr.Mcguigan expanded on the idea about how the parents eyes are closed as if they are unaware about what is happening but Marjane's eyes are open and it looks like she is looking straight at the reader as if she is the only one in her family who is aware of what is happening
• I also liked megans comment on the amount of scoops decreasing per panel so I wasnt really sure what that signified but I found that interesting

Literary Feature Hunt:

• I couldnt find any snippets for this section

Snippets:

• In this graphic novel I found that Marjane didnt get to live like a child instead she heard so much about violence and war she kept thinking about it. On P.25 Marjane's dad asks her if she wants to play monoply but she isnt interested because she just heard what her grandfather and the water cell and all of a sudden she wanted to take a bath and try to feel how he must have felt but her opinion actually changed because only a few pages before on P.18, she wanted to play monoply but all of a sudden she was no longer interested at all. I also really like how the author darkened the faces of the characters when they were in shock or really sad which is also shown on P.56
• I am not sure if she this has any significance but on P.17, Marjane is crying because god didnt come that night after she begged her parents to take her to the demonstration, then on P.53 Marjane mentions that she feels safest in gods arms so this shows that she doesnt really trust anyone else and she can trust him the most