Persepolis Summary Part 6

MARJANE TIMELINE AND SUMMARY ● Marjane's school is segregated along gender lines, and she is forced to wear a veil. ● Young Marjane learns that her grandfather was a prince who was imprisoned and tortured. ● Her Uncle Anoosh is freed during one regime change, only to be recaptured and executed later. ● Iraq invades Iran, and bombs them regularly. Marjane's neighbor's building is destroyed. ● Realizing that if her neighbor can die she can too, Marji decides she has nothing to fear. She mouths off at school and eventually gets expelled. ● Her parents decide that Marji is too independent and intelligent to live in Iran (this is a good thing), so they send her to be educated in Vienna. ● In Vienna, Marjane has trouble acclimating—the culture is just so different. ● Marjane experiments with sex, drugs, finding friends, and losing them; she also lives in a variety of different apartments. ● Eventually she becomes so homesick that she gets super depressed and starts sleeping on the streets. ● This causes her to go from homesick to just sick-sick, and she almost dies. ● This near-death experience is a wake-up call, which sends Marjane back to her support system: her family in Iran. ● She's glad to see her family, but giving up her freedom kind of sucks. She also doesn't want to admit what a hard time she had in Vienna, so she gets more depressed and tries to kill herself. ● Believing she was saved by an act of God, Marjane tries living her own life once again. She becomes more outspoken, she gets married, and then—when it feels right—she gets divorced. ● However, she does find her identity... and her identity is not compatible with living under the oppressive Iranian regime. ● Marjane returns to Western Europe, and never lives in Iran again. MARJANE'S MOTHER Character Analysis Revolutionary Road The first thing we learn about Marji's mom is that she's pretty revolutionary: "Her photo was published in all the European newsletters" (1.15) after a political protest. Marjane is proud of her mother, but her mother is scared. In a country where women are pressured to all be the same, having an identity is dangerous. Marji's mom has the same conflict about her daughter: She wants her to live her own life, emphasis on the word live. You have to be alive to live the way you want to be. Secrets and Lies In order to stay alive, Marji's mom has to be resourceful. She's super clever, thinking up the idea to smuggle rock posters for Marji into Iran in the lining of her dad's coat. Marji eventually realizes that "For an Iranian mother, my mom was very permissive" (17.41). This almost gets Marji in trouble when she wears her punk-rock clothes in public (a more conservative mother would certainly have forbidden her daughter from doing so), but Marji takes after her mother in one major aspect: She's super resourceful on her feet, and so she's able to talk her way out of it. There's one more thing Marji's mom is good at, and that's lying. (That's probably why she's such a good lie detector herself.) She's not lying in a bad way, though. She's an expert at changing the subject away from something terrible, like the death of their neighbors (it's sad that this is something that even has to be done), but she's also really good at making Marjane think that she's a good cook, even though Marjane is a terrible cook. Marji thinks her mother is very strict. Mom is a great lie detector, and always seems to know when Marji isn't telling her the truth. Marji calls her mother a "dictator" (15.24), equating her with some of the biggest villains in the war, but only because she doesn't understand that her mother isn't restricting her freedoms for the fun of it. Honestly, she's doing it to keep her daughter alive. Iran is a dangerous place, so we think Marji's mom is allowed to be a little over-protective. In fact, for living in a constant war zone, she allows her daughter a ton of freedom to make her own mistakes… and learn from them. If Marji was sequestered away from the rest of the world, like many young women in Iran were at the time, she wouldn't have grown up to be the woman that wrote this book. Let's pause here for a moment of gratitude for Marji's mom. MARJANE'S FATHER Character Analysis No More Heroes Marjane's dad is a photographer, and he often finds himself in dangerous situations, photographing political protests. Although he's playing a small role in the revolution (someone has to document the horrors that are happening, and it's not like he can just tweet about them in the 1980s), Marji has trouble rationalizing the fact that her father is not a hero. "My father was not a hero. […] If only he had been in prison" (8.1-8.2), she says. It takes her a long time to change her narrow definition of hero. A hero isn't just a person who goes to jail for standing up what he believes in. Marji's dad is a man who stands up for what he believes in, after all… he just happens not to get caught. Marji eventually realizes that "he loved his country as much as I did" (11.36), and just has a different way of showing it. The Scully Because of his more thoughtful, less physical, nature, he is very skeptical. He checks everything out from two different news sources and likes hearing the other side of the story. As a result, he's a great source of information on what is really going on in Iran, both for Marjane and for us. When Marjane returns to Iran after living in Vienna, she sees just how beaten and broken down her parents are from staying in the country. After talking to her father about the hundreds of thousands of people killed in Iran over the previous few years, she observes, "I didn't feel any real conviction in his voice. He seemed to me as blasé as my mother" (29.76). Her father always hoped to enact social change and, well, it never happened. No wonder he is tired and worn out. The only good to come of this is that he devotes his passion and energy into Marjane. Maybe she can be the one to change the world. MARJANE'S GRANDMA Character Analysis Lavender and Ice Water Grandma is a very influential figure in Marji's life. She lies to the soldiers about having diabetes so that they can dump all the wine in the toilet; she keeps her bra fresh with lavender; she tells Marji that she soaks her breasts in a bowl of ice water for ten minutes every morning and night, to keep them round and firm. Oh yeah—and she tells her to "always keep your dignity and be true to yourself" (19.55), which is maybe—maybe —more important than wine and boobies. This whole keeping her dignity and being true to herself thing is probably the most important lesson for Marji, and it's also the most difÏcult thing for her to achieve. Marjane thinks of her Grandma while living in Vienna, when she "managed to deny [her] nationality" (24.35), and she uses that memory of her grandmother to assert herself and feel good about her identity. However, Marjane backslides a bit later, after moving back to Iran. She ends up turning in an innocent man to avoid getting herself taken away during a raid. She relays the story to Grandma, thinking it's funny, but Grandma's not having it. "I think that you're a selfish bitch! That's what I think!!!" (33.46), she says. Thanks for the reality check, Gram. Grandma reminds Marjane that her ancestors fought for freedom, not for imprisoning innocents, and this reminder is exactly what Marjane needs. She loves and respects her Grandma, and, hey, Grandma is always right. Marjane decides that she needs to act in a way that will ensure Grandma will never yell at her again. Marji is probably the most sad to leave her Grandma behind when she goes to Vienna. We think Grandma is sad too, because she can't even bring herself to accompany the family to the airport. Grandma is also the last person in the book Marjane talks about, telling us that after she (Marjane) returned to Europe for good, she only saw her Grandma one last time. "Freedom had a price" (38.88), she says. In this case, the price was losing contact with one of the greatest influences in her life. Do you think it was worth it? UNCLE ANOOSH Character Analysis Back in the U.S.S.R. Marji's Uncle Anoosh has had a crazy life. His uncle helped Azerbaijan declare its independence, and he himself was a revolutionary who escaped Iran for the Soviet Union. His personal life was always in turmoil, too. Although he married and had two kids with a woman in the U.S.S.R., it wasn't a happy marriage, and he's scratched her face out in the family pictures he still has. That's some deep-seeded resentment there. Normally you don't see someone's face blurred out in photos unless it's the girl from The Ring, but Anoosh is very angry about his marriage. He never says why, only saying that Russians "aren't like us. It's hearts they don't have. They don't know how to love" (8.45-8.46). His Russian bride was such a terrible experience in fact, that being imprisoned in Iran for nine years is an upgrade for him. "What my wife made me suffer was much worse" (8.52), he says. Ouch. When Marji's dad tells her that Anoosh left to go back to Russia, she knows this isn't true. Being "on a trip" is code for dead. It turns out that Anoosh isn't dead—yet—he's just in prison, and she gets to visit him one last time before he dies. She's the one he wants to see, and he calls her the "star of my life" (9.55). Once Marjane finds out Uncle Anoosh is dead, she feels lost. She draws a picture of herself floating through space. Anoosh grounded her—to her family, to the revolution— and once he's gone, she has nothing to hold onto. His death even causes her to question her faith, and this is when she tells God "get out of my life!!! I never want to see you again" (9.59). Those three exclamation points tell us that she really means it. MEHRI Character Analysis Something About Mehri Mehri is the family maid who started working for them when she was eight years old. She would have been Marji's friend if not for the fact that she's basically "the help". Despite being a maid, Mehri was more like the older sister Marjane never had. Only ten when Marjane was born, Mehri even refers to Marji as her sister when Marji is writing love letters for her because Mehri can't write. We only get to know Mehri over about six pages. She falls in love with the neighbor, but is shamed by his rejection when Marjane's father tells the neighbor that Mehri is of the servant class and forbidden to date him. This class distinction is arbitrary to young Marjane, and it marks a turning point in her life when she starts thinking about how unfairly people of lower classes are treated. But after that chapter, we never see Mehri again; later on, the family has a different maid. What do you think happened to Mehri? Where did she go? SIAMAK JARI AND MOHSEN SHAKIBA Character Analysis Torture? We Hardly Knew 'Er! These two guys were imprisoned for rebelling against the government, and their fates are not pretty. In prison, they were tortured: whipped, burned with irons, had their fingernails pulled out. It makes getting hit in the nards with a knotted rope sound like a pleasant experience. These guys are the first political prisoners Marji meets. She respects them, but her tendency for hero worship leads her to respect them at the expense of respecting her father. Unfortunately, their freedom is short-lived: "All the former revolutionaries became the sworn enemies of the republic" (9.35). Mohsen gets drowned in his bathtub when the new regime takes over, and Siamak is targeted too, though he manages to flee. Marjane seems to include their stories to show us that one regime in Iran is no better than the previous one. It's hard out there for a revolutionary. MALI Character Analysis Flogging Mali Mali is a friend of Marji's mom, and when her house is bombed, she comes to stay with the family for a while. Her arrival provides important insights into what is going on in Iran politically, in addition to providing cultural comparison between Marjane's family and others. Whereas politics are at the forefront of Marjane's family's minds, Mali's family seems pretty out of touch with reality. Marji's dad doesn't like Mali's husband because he's too materialistic, a quality that's been passed down to their children. For instance, though their house has been bombed, all they can think about are their Star Wars figures. (Don't tell them how much those things go for on eBay these days, okay?) While shopping with Mali, Marji realizes how xenophobic people of Iran are. A pair of women talk loudly about how they don't like Mali and her family simply because they're refugees. They refer to them as prostitutes, humiliating them in public without even knowing them at all. And Mali and her family are from the same country, just a different region. How can one country be so divided? UNCLE TAHER Character Analysis Tugging On Your Heart (Attack) Strings Being Marji's uncle seems to be bad luck (be sure to read about Uncle Anoosh in this section), and Uncle Taher is no exception. He has a heart attack, and needs to go to England to have heart surgery. But Iran, being the paranoid place full of freedom restrictions that it is, will not give him a passport in a timely manner. Taher's one wish is to see his son one last time. Marji's family tries, and almost succeeds, at getting him a fake passport, but the man who will make the fake gets caught and has to flee the country. Uncle Taher dies and is buried on the same day as his ofÏcial passport arrives. Just to twist the knife into our heart even deeper, Marji tells us, "He never got to see his son" (16.56). Excuse us while we wipe our tears. Uncle Taher's story illustrates how war affects even people who aren't in combat, and that restrictions in freedoms hurt many people. The effects are felt far and wide. LUCIA Character Analysis Lucia Lucia Lucia is Marjane's roommate at the boarding school in Vienna. Before meeting her, Marjane imagines that Lucia might look a little like Heidi. When they finally meet, there's a huge language barrier between them. They try to find some common ground by sharing food with one another: Marjane shares some Iranian pistachios and Lucia shares… a Knorr soup. Um, thanks Lucia… for splurging at WalMart… we guess. At least it's not Cup Noodles? And while Lucia isn't the roommate from hell, she still blowdries her hair at 6:30 every morning. We don't think Lucia means bad; it's just cultural differences and an inability to communicate on both their parts. So the food thing might not have gone that well, but the girls do bond for real later on when all of Marjane's friends go away for Christmas. Lucia invites Marjane to her home, and her whole family is very warm and welcoming. They are some of the few people who don't treat Marjane like a terrorist: they're genuinely happy to meet someone from a different country. It's kind of sad that Marjane gets expelled from the boarding house and has to leave in a hurry, because it means she never sees Lucia again. We guess good friends go as easily as they come into Marjane's life. JULIE AND MOMO Character Analysis Mom(e)o and Julie(t) Marjane meets Julie at the school in Vienna, and Julie introduces her to Momo, Thierry, and Oliver. We don't really get to know any of them very much (Marjane doesn't talk about hardly any of her friends for more than a chapter) aside from Julie and Momo. Momo is the eccentric of the group: someone with a Mohawk, round glasses, unusual earrings, and a unique fashion sense, who goes around saying things like "life is pain" (24.28). We have to wonder how much of this is purely a persona, a façade he puts on for show. He kisses everyone on the lips when he meets them, even men (technically he is Marjane's first kiss) and is fascinated with death. However, he gets a little irritated when Marjane, who has seen plenty of death first-hand in war-torn Iran, turns out to be more of an expert on the Grim Reaper than he is. We see a little more of Julie, and we do mean more of Julie. When Marjane moves in with her, she realizes that Julie is—gasp—having sex. And outside of marriage, too. (And outside of her bedroom… and probably outside of the apartment… Julie is very liberated.) She's even on the pill. Yes, that pill. She also dates "mature" (22.4) men and smokes and drinks. All of this eventually rubs off on Marjane. Julie's liberated attitude ends up liberating Marjane as well—she even does her makeup for her. We doubt Marjane would be smoking pot, drinking alcohol, and having sex if she was still in Iran, or living in the boarding house with the nuns. FRAU DOCTOR HELLER Character Analysis A Horse is a Horse, Of Course Of Course She looks kind of like Ric Ocasek from the Cars. Her dog poops on Marjane's bed. She calls Marjane a prostitute for bringing her boyfriend home (and this in Vienna, a city more sexually liberated than Iran). And she blames Marjane for everything that goes wrong, like stealing her bracelet. If she lived in New York and her building had bedbugs, she'd basically be the worst landlord ever. We have to wonder, though, if she's as bad as Marjane says she is. It's not like Marjane is exactly a treat to live with at that time either… KIA Character Analysis Kia Soul Kia is one of Marjane's childhood friends. He helped her bully another kid with some homemade iron knuckles back in the day when torture seemed fun to a child, and he also served in the war while Marjane was away in Vienna. He came back missing both his left leg and his left arm. Marjane has trouble dealing with this severe disability—it's the handicapped elephant in the room, and she wants to address it, but she doesn't want him to have to talk about it either. It makes their reunion difÏcult. However Kia, like Marjane, turns to humor to cope. He tells her a bawdy joke about a disabled soldier, and they're able to laugh and chat like they never spent years apart. She says "the only way to bear the unbearable is to laugh at it" (30.69). His story is a testament to the power of humor… and a good dirty joke. REZA Character Analysis Prenuptial Agreement Marjane and Reza are less James Carville and Mary Matalin and more Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat. (Okay—that's what we call a '90s reference. Don't get it? Then replace Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat with Katy Perry and Russell Brand.) Sure, opposites attract, but we get the feeling that it's not going to work out. Reza is a painter, and Marjane is a painter. And… that's all they have in common. Marjane says "we complemented each other" (32.34), which is true. The problem is they don't compliment each other, with an i. They're not very nice to one another, which is kind of important in a relationship. Marjane and Reza decide to marry, but the reason seems to be less romantic and more societal. Iran kind of expects people to be married. Marjane doesn't realize that she's caving to societal pressure, but her dad does. He makes sure Reza grants Marjane a "right to divorce" (36.11) and encourages her to exercise this right: "Live together as long as you feel truly happy. Life is too short to be lived badly" (36.13). Wise words. Marjane's dad knows that Reza isn't right for his daughter. Maybe it's not even Reza who is wrong for Marjane, but marriage in general since she draws a picture of herself behind bars right after the wedding. She feels trapped being married, and maybe she'd feel trapped by any man. Whatever the reason, Reza and Marjane seem civil in public, but they're just keeping up appearances, like that British sitcom they're always showing on PBS, but a lot more tragic than funny. They eventually divorce; it's for the best for Marjane, but we never learn how Reza takes it or where he is today. How do you think he dealt with it?