All for One and One for All

Satrapi attempts to show that her individual character and the character of all Iranians are unified into one, and she does so very successfully in pages 85 and 86 of Persepolis.  In these pages, Marji (a young Satrapi) is at her strict girls school where she and the rest of the girls are required to wear the traditional headdress and cover the rest of their bodies (as is required by law), are asked to write an essay about the war, and then deal with the resulting emotions that come from such circumstances.  Satrapi shows her personal reactions alongside the similar ones of her classmates (who symbolize the whole of Iran).

Earlier in Persepolis, the government puts extremist constrictions on schools and colleges, resulting in segregation and the wearing of traditional Muslim garments.  At the bottom of page 85, all the girls are sitting in a uniform fashion listening to the teacher.  This demonstrates how, not only Marji, but the rest of the girls are burdened by the same political restrictions on everyday life. 

The teacher, in the same panel, tells the girls that they must write an essay about the war.  The important part of this seemingly every-day request to write an essay is that the teacher acknowledges “[the war] is a difficult subject, but it concerns us all” (Satrapi, 85).  It is possible that most of the Iranian children still able to be in school were presented with a similar prompt.  With the teacher’s simple statement, Satrapi unifies all of her previous experiences dealing with the war by putting them into a simple assignment and (at the same time) shows that the war has permeated not only her life, but the lives of all the girls at school and the teacher’s life as well.  

Though Satrapi’s/ Marji’s history is what is most known (seeing as she is the author), all her hardships are brought into perspective on the next page (86).  Marji is very impressed with her own historical account of the war (the audience already knowing she is a bit of a history buff), but it is her friend Pardisse’s essay that brings Marji’s class and Satrapi’s audience to a common state of empathy.  The entire class and the teacher are drawn with tears running down their faces.  Pardisse’s father died in the war, as did many of Marji’s relatives.  However, there is a brief separation between Marji as an individual and Paradisse (possibly symbolical of the rest of Iran), when Marji tries to console her friend.  Paradisse’s reaction is very different from what Marji is probably expecting, “I wish he were alive and in jail rather than dead and a hero” (Satrapi, 86), but the sweat marks around Marji’s face in the last panel show that she understands what her friend means (probably thinking back to her own beloved Uncle Anoosh, wishing he were still alive). 

The unified circumstances and emotions between Marji and her class are evidence that Satiri saw herself unified with the rest of her country, but her personal beliefs of heroism would sometimes distance her from the gravity and reality of the situation.