Persepolis Summary

PERSEPOLIS SUMMARY How It All Goes Down It's 1980 in Iran, and Marjane Satrapi isn't rocking out to Michael Jackson or watching Dallas; she's being forced to wear a veil at her school, which is now segregated. The boys and girls are separated. This marks the beginning of years of political and religious turmoil in Iran. Marjane's mother and father often attend political protests, kind of like a more violent Occupy Wall Street, and support revolutionaries when they can, including many of Marjane's relatives, like Uncle Anoosh. Uncle Anoosh had fled to the U.S.S.R., because the Iranian regime believed him to be a spy. Uncle Anoosh teaches Marjane much about the world. He also gives her a swan carved out of bread, which is a lot nicer than a swan made from origami paper (because you can probably eat it). Marji grows very close to Uncle Anoosh, and she takes it very hard when he is executed. Because of her mother, father, Grandma, and uncle, Marjane's passions lie in social activism. At a young age, she wants to fix social inequalities and make the world into a place where old people don't have to suffer. That's kind of hard to do when there are bombs falling on Tehran and killing Marjane's friends and family members. Eventually, Marjane's parents decide that Iran is not the place for the daughter they've raised. Marjane is a girl who is headstrong, independent, and outspoken. Her behavior gets her expelled from school, and mom and pop are afraid that a worse punishment will befall her as the regime gets stricter. They ship Marjane to Vienna, where she ends up in a boarding house run by nuns. It's no Viennese Sister Act, though. Marjane gets along with the nuns about as well as she gets along with authority in Iran. Over the next few years, she finds herself in a variety of living situations: with her sexually liberated friend Julie, in an apartment with eight homosexuals (no, she's not on Vienna's version of Project Runway), and renting a room from a horse-faced woman with a foul attitude and an incontinent dog… just to name a few. Marjane misses her family, who she left back in Iran and are her only support system. She gets depressed, and becomes homeless. Living on the streets makes her so sick she coughs up blood. She survives, and moves back home to Iran. Giving up her freedoms is hard, but living with her family is what she needs. Her mom and dad treat her as an equal, and her grandmother gives her the reality check she needs: Marjane has to always be true to herself in order to be happy. Back in Iran, she continues doing what social activism she can (like designing a new uniform with a shorter veil), gets married, parties, and then gets divorced. All these things are steps on her way to finding her identity. After a couple of years, Marjane realizes (again) that Iran is not for her, and she moves back to Europe, letting us know that she only got to see her beloved Grandma once more before she died. Freedom has a price... PERSEPOLIS CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY The Veil ● We're introduced to young Marji, age ten. The year is 1980. She's not wearing acid-washed jeans and rocking out to Michael Jackson, though: she's in school, wearing a veil, just like all the other girls. ● They don't want to wear it. ● In 1980, the new regime in Iran made it mandatory for women to wear the veil. They also segregated the schools between male and female. ● Marji tells us that she wanted to be a prophet when she was a girl. "I was born with religion" (1.20), she says. ● The school thinks it's weird that prophesizing is Marji's career choice, so they call her parents. ● Even though she tells her parents she wants to be a doctor, she still really wants to be a prophet. ● PERSEPOLIS CHAPTER 2 SUMMARY The Bicycle ● After a brief Iran history lesson (here's how it's summed up: "2500 years of tyranny and submission" (2.7)) we learn that the regime burned down a movie theater with a bunch of people in it. ● Marji wants to participate in the protest that's being organized against the police. "For a revolution to succeed, the entire population must support it" (2.39). ● But her parents won't let her come. ● That night, she tries to talk to God, but he doesn't respond. ● PERSEPOLIS CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY The Water Cell ● Marji's parents go to protest demonstrations against the king every day. ● Young Marji has trouble rationalizing this because her schoolbook says that God chose the king. Who is the king of Iran? George W. Bush? ● Her dad tells her how it the king actually came to power: the British put him there to try and take control of Iran's oil. ● Also, the ruler that was deposed was Marji's grandfather, who was a prince. (Not the little one.) ● Her grandpa briefly served as prime minister, but he opposed the new regime and was sent to prison. ● Prison was painful, to say the least. One night, he was in a water-filled cell for hours. ● That night, Marji stays in the bath a long time to try and understand what her grandfather went through. She probably didn't even use any Mr. Bubble that night. ● PERSEPOLIS CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY Persepolis ● Grandma comes to visit. ● She tells Marji that when her husband was arrested, they lost all their wealth. She still took every effort to make sure her family looked nice despite being in poverty. ● That night, the family waits a long time for Marji's father to come home from a protest. Marji fears he is dead. ● He makes it home alive and uninjured. He tells the story of what happened at the demonstration, but Marji is too young to understand. ● She decides to educate herself to better understand, and she starts reading lots of books. Too bad there was no Shmoop in Iran in 1980. ● Wait, why is this chapter called Persepolis? (Check out our "What's Up With the Title?" section if you're curious.) PERSEPOLIS CHAPTER 5 SUMMARY The Letter ● Marji reads and reads and reads and realizes that the biggest problem with the world is the divide between social classes. ● She recognizes the divide firsthand when her maid, Mehri, falls in love with the boy next door, but is forbidden to pursue him because she is a much lower class than he. ● He wears a Bee Gees shirt, so maybe this is for the best? ● Later, Marji gets Mehri to take her to a demonstration. ● Afterward, Marji's mother is angry. They had demonstrated on "Black Friday"—not the hellish shopping day, but a day when many Iranians were killed by their own country's soldiers. PERSEPOLIS CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY The Party ● Time for another regime change in Iran. It feels like they change regimes as much as American Idol changes judges. ● People are excited, but Marji's parents know better than to expect any peace. ● Marji bullies a kid in school because his father was in the Shah's secret police and killed people. ● Her mom sets her straight: "His father did it. But it's not Ramin's fault" (6.34). ● After this, Marji realizes that she has to learn to forgive. PERSEPOLIS CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY The Heroes ● The political prisoners are liberated, and two of the freed prisoners are friends of the family. ● They invite Mohsen and Siamak over, and Mohsen tells them about the painful torture he endured. ● At first, Marji takes the horrific torture methods and turns it into a game to play with her friends. Whatever happened to good ol' hide and seek? ● But later that night, she feels overwhelmed and tries to find comfort with her mom and with God. PERSEPOLIS CHAPTER 8 SUMMARY Moscow ● Marji is sad that her dad never went to prison. "My father was not a hero" (8.1), she says. ● Luckily for her though, her Uncle Anoosh was. ● His story is pretty scary: He was loyal to his uncle Fereydoon, who proclaimed the independence of Azerbaijan; naturally, the Shah was not happy. ● Anoosh has a dream: "dead people, blood" (8.13). Um, at least he wasn't in his underwear in front of all the dead people, right? ● The next morning, his uncle is assassinated, and Anoosh flees. ● He gains asylum in the U.S.S.R, and even marries. He hates his wife, though he never says why. ● When he returns to Iran, he is captured and imprisoned for nine years. Marji thinks that is awesome. PERSEPOLIS CHAPTER 9 SUMMARY The Sheep ● While Uncle Anoosh stays with the family, Marji listens to all the political discussion and tries to follow along. It's a little like watching foreign television without the subtitles: she can get the gist of things, but not the specifics. ● As the Islamic Revolution takes power, people flee Iran in droves, including Marji's friends and many of her family members. ● Her family stays, even though all the former revolutionaries who were freed, including Uncle Anoosh, are enemies of the government again. ● One day, Marji comes home from school to find Anoosh gone. Her parents tell her that Anoosh had to leave in a hurry. ● Then Marji's dad comes clean: Anoosh was arrested. ● He's allowed to talk to one person in prison, and he wants to talk to Marji. ● He tells her, "You are the little girl I always wanted to have" (9.52), and he gives her a swan he made to match one he gave her earlier. He then calls her the "star of [his] life" (9.55). It's a really sweet exchange, which is good, because it's the last time she sees him. ● He is later executed. ● She tells God, "get out of my life" (9.59). She's so lost, she feels like she's lost in space. PERSEPOLIS CHAPTER 10 SUMMARY The Trip ● Iran starts shutting down faster than the mall on Christmas Eve. They shut down the U.S. embassy and the universities. ● Soon, all women are forced to wear the veil. ● Marji's mother tells Marji that if she's ever asked what she does during the day, she should say she prays. ● One day, she accompanies her parents to a demonstration, where she sees someone stabbed in the leg. ● That's the last demonstration they go to. ● They take a vacation to Spain. It's nice, but when they return, Grandma tells them that a new war is starting, this time with Saddam Hussein.