Persepolis

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Persepolis
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Graphic Memoir

• Persepolis is a French-language autobiographical
  comic by Marjane Satrapi depicting her childhood
  up to her early adult years in Iran during and
  after the Islamic revolution. The title is a
  reference to the ancient capital of the Persian
  Empire, Persepolis.

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Authors Purpose

• Persepolis is an account of demands made without
  understanding of repercussions. A child can only
  see so far into the future, and even then, the
  tendency is for years to be skipped and
  hardships, overlooked. Even when a child knows
  facts about Palestine and Fidel Castro, and reads
  comics entitled 'dialectic materialism',
  intellectualism does not succeed to quell the
  experience of life itself - you have to suffer to
  understand, but you have to learn the hard way to
  understand how it feels. Satrapi, herself, learns
  this lesson in her adolescence.

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Visual Tools
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Use of Patterns
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The Text

• Based on her own personal experience of the
  Islamic Revolution in Iran, Marjane Satrapi
  introduces us to the effects of cultural change
  through the eyes of a child. The graphic novel
  entitled, Persepolis, is a political, historical,
  and extremely personal account of a girl's growth
  into maturity.

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Background

• There are some indications that the site of
  Persepolis was already a government's center
  under Cyrus the Great (559-530 BC) and his son
  Cambyses II (530-522 BC), but there are no
  archaeological traces of this older phase. Darius
  'invented' Persepolis as the splendid seat of the
  government of the Achaemenid empire and as its
  center for receptions and festivals. The wealth
  of Persia was to be visible in every aspect of
  its construction. Persepolis was a showcase.

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To the north of the apadana, the Gate of All
Nations also known as Xerxes' Gate
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Alexander in Persia

• Persepolis was taken by the Macedonian king
  Alexander the Great in the first weeks of 330. He
  destroyed several palace buildings because he was
  not yet sole ruler of the Persian empire, and it
  was too dangerous to leave the enormous treasures
  behind, where his enemies could recapture them.
  The Palace of Xerxes seems to have received a
  special treatment, because it was damaged more
  severely than other buildings it is likely that
  the Greek soldiers in Alexander's company had
  their revenge for the destruction of Athens in
  480 BCE. When Alexander returned several years
  later and saw the ruins, he regretted his act. 

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Drawing by Cornelis de Bruijn, a Dutch
archeologist, who visited site in 1704.