Religion or Modernism?

                 Throughout the graphic novel Persepolis, the author uses a combination of illustration and words to express the battle between modernistic views and staying true to your religion. Set during the Islamic revolution, Marji is a young girl who has to live through the war unfolding in her country. A question the reader is repeatedly forced to ask is the same in which Marji must ask herself when deciding where she stands when it comes to the war: Which is more important, not straying from your religion or embracing new modernistic views, and to what point can you show you rebellion? The first time the reader is met with the question is with the introduction of the veil to the school children(page 3). Up until the novels beginning it is expressed that the differences between boys and girls is unimportant, they are in the same classes and the veil is the first time that girls as shown as inferior to boys. The children don't understand why the veil must be worn as they had never been mandatory prior to this point. The first frame on page 6 depicts and image of the main character, there is a line dividing the picture, and therefore the girl, in half. To the left shows a normal girl surrounded by things of science and math. The right shows her covered in a veil surrounded by a more feminine design. Finally, Marji was forced to take a stand when a bomb went off on the street she lived. She returned home to find that while her family was unharmed, her friend Neda and her family had been killed. Marji found out as they walked past the rubble and "saw a turquoise bracelet. It was Neda's . . . The bracelet was still attached to . . ." it had been in fact attached to her friends wrist. From this point on, Marji began to rebel in school which taught Islamic as law. Eventually, her act of rebellion got her kicked out of multiple schools, her parents found the safest place for her was out of the country before her rebellions got her killed. With the events of her friends death, she finally appeared to decide which was more important and therefore was unwilling to be pushed in the shadows like all the rest of the females in her country.