The Veil of Revolution: A Child’s Perspective in Persepolis
The Veil
1980
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.
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.
Plot Summary
At the opening of the book, Marjane, or ‘Marji,’ is ten years old. It’s the year after the Iranian Revolution and although her family has always been secular, Marji must wear a veil and attend a religious, girls-only school. She’s imaginative, but doesn’t really understand what’s happening. She gives us a child’s-eye view of the country’s history, from its glorious past as the Persian city of Persepolis to the tumultuous events leading up to the present moment. Gradually, her family helps her make sense of what’s going on around her. Violence is a daily event as protests fill the streets. When her beloved Uncle Anoosh returns, Marji finds out that he had fought as a revolutionary and spent time in prison.
The country becomes more religious. Marji’s mother comes home one day, frightened after having been accosted for not wearing a veil. Iraq begins bombing Tehran and the family has to spend time in a bomb shelter. It’s so bad that a neighboring Jewish family is killed one day during an intense attack. During all this, Marji tries to be a normal teenager. She likes punk music and American clothes, but she frightens her parents when she buys them on the black market. Increasingly worried by Marji’s rebellious behavior, her parents announce that Marji will be moving to Austria to attend a new school — by herself. Marji’s beloved grandmother helps her pack and tells her never to forget where she came from.
In Vienna, Marji lives briefly with some friends of her parents, Zozo and her daughter Shirin, but it doesn’t go well and she quickly moves to a boarding house run by nuns. When a nun makes cruel comments about Marji’s Iranian heritage, Marji snaps and is thrown out. She moves in with Julie and her liberal mother. European ways sometimes puzzle Marji, who has a hard time understanding why teenagers disrespect their parents, or talk so much about sex. All the while, Marji is developing into a young woman, and she begins experimenting with sex and selling drugs. Her boyfriend Markus cheats on her, and in desperation, Marji begins living on the streets. After two months, she winds up in the hospital with bronchitis. Finally, she reconnects with her parents, who arrange for her to come home.
Once more, Marji must create a new life. Her friends have found ways to adjust to the new regime, but Marji no longer fits in. In despair, she attempts suicide. When she survives, she decides to completely revamp herself: new hair, new clothes, new attitude. She becomes an aerobics instructor, and starts dating Reza. She also enrolls in art school. During this period, Marji and Reza have several run-ins with the moral police, who have the authority to whip or fine them for being seen together out of wedlock. They marry, but their relationship is not a happy one and they decide to divorce. Marji’s grandmother helps her through it, confiding that she had once been divorced herself. Once more, Marji realizes that she must leave home in order to find the life she wants. She says good-bye to her parents at the airport, a repeat of the scene when she was 14 and left for Austria. Marji is now an adult woman and a confident artist, although the parting is still bittersweet. As she writes in the final scene, ‘Freedom had a price.’
Marjane
Marjane is the novel’s main character. The book is a narrative of her life from six years of age until fourteen years of age. She provides the childhood perspective from which the historical events of the novel are understood.
Mr. Satrapi
Mr. Satrapi is Marjane’s father. He is a leftist political protestor that takes part in the demonstrations of 1979, yet he is also an established engineer and maintains a middle class lifestyle.
Mrs. Satrapi
Mrs. Satrapi is Marjane’s mother. She holds leftist political views and often urges Marjane and her friends to rely on education as a way to further themselves and their country. Marjane often equates her with an overbearing presence as she grows older, yet she maintains a close bond and relationship with both her parents.
Anoosh
Anoosh is Marjane’s uncle. He was imprisoned by the Shah for his communist views, but was released after the Revolution. He had been married in Russia, but his wife divorced him. Anoosh is arrested by the Islamic regime and executed on the false charges that he is a Russian spy.
Grandmother
Marjane’s grandmother lives with Marjane’s family for a while. Her husband had been a prince of the Shah and had been made prime minister. He had been arrested for conspiring with communists and tortured in a water cell. Her grandmother provides Marjane with a matriarchal figure.
Siamak
Siamak is a hero of the revolution. He had been captured and tortured by the Shah’s police and had been released after the Revolution. The Islamic regime also seeks to capture him and they kill his sister in the process. Siamak escapes Iran by hiding in a group of sheep being transported across the border.
Mohsen
Mohsen is a hero of the Revolution and a friend of Marjane’s family. Mohsen had been captured and tortured by the Shah’s forces. He is murdered by the new Islamic regime by being drowned in a bathtub. The regime frames his death as a suicide.
Mehri
Mehri is Marjane’s nanny and maid. She was taken in by the Satrapi’s as a young child because her impoverished family could not support her. Mehri falls in love with a neighborhood boy but she cannot be with him because she is from a lower social class than he is.
Mali
Mali is a close friend of the Satrapi’s. She comes to live with them for a while after their border town is bombed by Iraqi forces. She and her husband had been wealthy, and the work portrays them as quite materialistic, but they lost everything in the bombing.
Taher
Taher is Marjane’s uncle. He suffers numerous heart attacks from smoking and from the stress of war. After his third heart attack, he is refused a passport by the hospital director and dies without seeing his son for a last time.
Khosro
Khosro is a friend of Marjane’s family. He is asked to make a fake passport for Marjane’s Uncle Taher, but he leaves the country before he is able to complete the job because of government persecution.
Niloufar
Niloufar is a young girl that hides in Khosro’s basement. She is captured and executed by the Iranian government.