Persopolis themes and stuff; by david witzig

David Witzig
11/14/2013

Persepolis themes and stuff

     One major theme brought up in Persepolis is the abandonment of faith. At the beginning of her childhood, Majane says "I was born with faith" (Satrapi 6), this sets up that she had supper strong faith; so that we can see it constantly wearing down . This faith is so strong that when asked what to be when she grew up, she responded, "I want to be a Profit" (Satrapi 6). Obviously she had more faith than the average person, and so it would be really hard to get rid of it, but it does happen. The first time we see her losing faith is during the chapter 'The Bicycle' when she puts her idea of being a profit on holds and instead pretends to be a communist dictator with her friends. This action isn't very unfaithful but it leads her later in the chapter to stop talking to god and do something else; this is huge, because it makes god a secondary priority. We continue to see her letting go god when she hears stories of imprisonment and torture form the government, she continually starts to find that god is no longer a confort. At this point she is only holding on to religion by a hair, this hair snaps when she sees that her uncle, Anoosh,  was executed by the government. God comes to confort her, when she tells him to "get out!", she then says, "I was so lost, without any berrings"(Satrapi 71). We see that through all of these traumatic events she eventually rationalises and sees that god is not real. Through and through, we can conclude Satrapi is saying that it is easy to belive in God at peace time, but during chaos it is clear God wont be their.