Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

The novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi tells a story of a girl’s childhood during a revolution. To tell the story of Marjane’s childhood, Satrapi uses background, spacing and the speech bubbles with the text inside of them to demonstrate the change of her character where she becomes more mature. The two frames for my Persepolis essay were frames on the page 70, middle right and bottom left. Both of the frames happen in the middle of the novel. Before seeing those frames we learn that Marjane talks to God every night. The first frame sets a very calm and peaceful mood. Then we can see that in the middle of the frame Marjane lies down crying on her bed and God visits her, just like he does every night. He peaks from the side and demonstrates his power by looking from above onto her lying down. The second frame on that page sets more of a tension by being harsher than the first one. The frame shows Marjane standing on her bed showing her power and presents God standing across from her with his hands down showing his powerless. The black background of both frames indicates Marjane’s bad times.
These moments show importance to the narrative, because they demonstrate the change in her character and the raise of tension. We can see that Marjane eliminates God by telling him that she never wants to see him again, where before she …show more content…
In the first scene Marjane’s powerless is shown by her lying helplessly on bed crying and God looking from above down on her, which shows his power. Marjane’s bed, in the middle of frame, takes our focus on her. In Gods message, he uses a shortcut of Marjane’s name, “Marji” which makes Marjane a young powerless character. Later God asks what the problem was. That part indicated Gods caring character. The speech bubble has a smooth edge, which makes it a kind message. Those details in this frame help the reader see the power of God, however then in the second frame the mood