Marji always had a close relationship with her family
throughout the story, even when she was in Austria (excluding the time when she
was alone on the street for a couple months). No matter how far gone she seemed
to be, they always knew how to bring her back. For instance, when she came back
from Austria and she was deeply depressed, they always stood by her side
reminding her of who she was and why that was important. And all the while she
was in Austria, when she was doing things that she knew wouldn’t impress her
parents, the thought of them usually grounded her back to her roots. When she
told the one man in Austria that she was French, not Iranian, the thought of
what her grandmother would think of her saying that made her yell out how she
was proud to be Iranian when the girls were making fun of her. She always had
her family in her mind. When drinking and parties were outlawed in Iran, her
parents continued to have them and to drink alcohol and play games. They said
they needed this for their survival. So many things were taken away from them
after the war began, they needed something to keep them alive and to keep them
happy. Which is why it was worth the risk of getting caught having parties, because
if they didn’t have them, they will have given in to just about all of the
restrictions that had been put on them, that they wouldn’t hardly have their
own identity anymore. Their family did what they needed to do to stay sane.
I
didn’t understand what the title Persepolis
had to do with the novel at first. And I’m still not exactly sure that what I think
about the title is correct. I didn’t even know where the name “Persepolis” came
from until I was reading the book in the middle school classroom here in
Pullman that I am teaching in, one of the students came up to me and asked what
I was reading. I showed him, I think the graphic novel part of it interested
him, but when he saw the title he said “Oh, Persepolis, that’s like the Old
Persian country”. And then I asked him what he meant, because the book took
place in Iran and then in Austria. He then explained to me that Persepolis
means city of Persians and that it was in part of where Iran is now. He knew a
lot about this because his family came from Saudi Arabia so they learned more
about there than I had ever learned about it. And then it made sense why in the
novel, she said she spoke Persian, which I didn’t really know that was a language
in Iran, realizing how little I knew about Iran in general. I thought about the
idea of Old Persia. In the novel, Marji and her family are always talking about
how restricted they are because of what is new, and how they wish things were
as they were before. When their city was probably originally all alike, a city
of Persians, now with new government and war bringing in new ideas and new
restrictions. They only wanted to go back to how it was for them, with
everything was comfortable and normal. I think that is at least part of why the
novel is titled Persepolis.
