Persepolis Graphic Memoir Persepolis is a Frenchlanguage autobiographical

Persepolis

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.

Author’s 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.

Visual Tools

Use of Patterns

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.

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.

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

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.

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