Iwamoto 1

Yui

Cristina

IB year1 English

Nov8, 2022

Character development: Death

In Persepolis, Marjane writes herself growing up from childhood to teenage, her

trying to understand the world that she lives in as well as her attempts at trying to

maintain her independence, and individuality among irrational torture, suffering, and

death. The main threats to her are the government’s restrictive measures which

disallows in public the kind of modern outlook and expression that Marjane would

prefer. As a child, she was struggled with being thrust into the consequences of the

adult world without being fully able or allowed to understand the shadowy

mechanisms that dictate the oftentimes sorrowful fates of her friends and her relatives.

She reacts to the forces around her by lashing out against, emulating, supporting, or

resigning herself to them.

I suppose death develop her as a character. First panel with death in this book

is on page15. she heard that there were 400 hundred victims at the fire, she be just

curious. Death wasn’t really a realistic or known thing for her. She wasn’t afraid of

death yet, she even says “I want to go” to where something like this is would happen

to see what it is, death is. On page 32 first panel, you can see death was still

unfamiliar for her, a sentence “something escaped me” provides. she was shocked by
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seeing people making fun of people making up someone who died from the cancer to

a hero just because cadavers wanted to protest the king. She “didn’t understand

anything” why people could laugh about someone’s death, it was till special

happening for her. After this, she read all the books as much as she could, “I’d never

read as much as I did during this period”. This made her not only as curious but also

knowledgeable. On page 52 first panel, Ahmadi’s death story had given her “new

ideas for games”. But the end of the day, she suddenly started crying to her mom. She

could go through death at just a moment, but it is still too heavy to go over it by

herself.

On page 70, she faces to the death of people she personally knows for the first time in

this book. She reacts so much more than she did to the last panel I’ve said. She shuts out to the

god aggressively, using strong words like “shut up, you!”, “get out of my life!”. That’s because

she is clearly frustrated by the death and facing it very hardly. On the next page, she is basically

just floating in the space and dark there with just few subjects. On this page, she seems calm and

released which provides her expression on the last two panels are not really what she meant. She

was being too emotional uncontrolled. On page 142, Ending part of the book, the whole panel is

just all black. This black panel gives her big growing. Biggest anger, sadness from Neda’s death.

Those made her so much stronger. “Nothing scared me anymore” she says on the next panel on

page 143. After few panels when she is told about Nilofar’s death, she does not show her

emotions a lot less than she did earlier. This shows how she changed, grew through Neda’s

death. I suppose the author is telling readers that she is grown enough to live alone in another

country by herself as an independent woman.

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Death is a big action in the life, she grew by going through a lot of deaths around her. I

believe especially her relative, Neda’s death gives her biggest shock, but also made her stronger

as a person. I am very into how she is doubtful and brave all the time, however, Marjane used to

cry a lot and asked to her imaginal god. By going through the deaths, she becomes finding

answers out by herself and independent at the end.

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