Persepolis is an autobiography or we can also call it a memoir which is presented in the form of a

graphic novel. This is a story of a young girl who lives in Iran and the book describes how she grows
psychologically and morally while there is a revolution going on in her country, Iran. The revolution is
called as the Islamic Revolution and was introduced in 1979. The name of the girl is Marjane Satrapi
and she is the author of this book. She initially lived in Iran where her family is very open minded but
due to the war that was going on in her country, it was an unsafe place to live in so she moved to
Vienna to continue her further education. In Vienna, she discovers a whole new and different world
where she realises the unfairness of the society. But with time Marjane becomes more and more
experienced and becomes a strong individual. Her purpose for writing this book is to show the world
that Iran is not a country of fundamentalists and terrorists. She basically wanted to eradicate the
stereotypical mind-set of terrorism about Iran from people’s minds. The intended audience of this
book will be anyone who is 16+ and wants to know about the history of Iran. The age group is 16+
because there are some abusive and offensive words and also some explicit content. Although there
is no explicit nudity but there are explicit sexual references throughout the book. There is no hint
given about the audience of a particular geographical location but it is obvious that people living in
Iran and Vienna will be able to relate better to the author.

The global issue raised by this book is gender discrimination and inequality against females. So, what
is gender discrimination? Gender discrimination, also known as sexual discrimination, is any action
that specifically denies opportunities, privileges, or rewards to a person (or a group) because of
gender. In the beginning of the book Islamic Revolution is introduced which had affected everyone
especially women. It was led by extremists of Iran. Females lost almost all of their rights, they were
forced to wear veil which is a covering for face and if they denied from wearing the veil, there were
serious consequences. There were guards scattered around the city and they would arrest women
for not wearing veil or expressing themselves. They were also not allowed to wear makeup or heels.
Consequently, women were not free to express themselves, they were not able to portray their
womanliness which is the quality of being female. Basically, their status had deteriorated during
Islamic revolution.

In the first chapter, The Veil, in the second frame a class photograph is shown in which the all the
female students are wearing a veil and it is very difficult to distinguish them which clearly shows that
they are not able to express themselves. All the girls have a sad look on their face and the reason for
this is wearing the veil. In the fifth frame, the line “We didn’t really like to wear the veil, especially
since we didn’t understand why we had to.” suggests that the females didn’t like to wear the veil
and most importantly the reason behind wearing the veil was unknown to them. Phrase like “Its too
hot out!” shows that it was also uncomfortable to wear the veil. Although not all the women were
against wearing it, some of them supported the introduction of veil. This is shown by first frame on
page 5 “Everywhere in the streets there were demonstrations for and against the veil.” Third frame
on page 74 “Two guys two bearded guys two fundamentalist bastards. The bastards. They”
insinuates how terrified marjane’s mother was. The mother’s car had broken down and she was not
wearing the veil, and so two men approached her and insulted her by saying that women like her
should be raped for not wearing the veil. On page 133, Marjane tries to dress up in her rock and roll
clothing and the line “their job was to put us back on the straight and narrow by explaining the
duties of Muslim women.” Connotes that how difficult it was for even a kid like Marjane to dress up
and walk down the street. Iran had set up people to make sure that all of the women look identical
by covering as much as possible with a veil. In conclusion, this book displays mostly how women
were supressed and considered as an inferior group during the Islamic revolution.