Blog 4 - Persepolis - Purpose for Writing the Book

I believe that Marjane Satrapi was writing this book for people who don’t really know very much about Iran. She wrote this book for people who only know about Iran since the last revolution. If that is all someone knows about Iran, it could seem like Iran as a bad place full of mean people who send boys away to be killed in wars, make women and girls wear the veil and have many crazy rules. Her purpose was to give people the message that these things happened, but they should not only think about her country that way. She also wanted people to know about her family and the things that happened in her family. The people in her family were good people like most of the Iranian people.

Marjane Satrapi wanted to teach people that her country has a great history.  In the introduction to the book she wrote about how people talk about Iran

Since then, this old and great civilization has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticize, and terrorism.  As an Iranian who lived more than half my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth. This is why writing Persepolis was so important to me. I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists. I also don’t want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten (Satrapi, introduction page 2).

I think that she achieved her purpose because I learned many things about Iran from her book. Other people who did not know much about Iran would learn many things too. Before reading her book, I did not know much about her country, and I do not know anyone from Iran. I knew that Iran had many wars, but not much else. Maybe they are bad people and like to fight other countries. From the book I learned that Iran was a rich country before and other countries were always starting fights with them. This made me feel different about their wars, because other countries have invaded China too. Also, in the introduction, she wrote

Iran was rich, Because of its wealth and its geographic location, it invited attacks: From Alexander the Great, form its Arab neighbors to the west, from Turkish and Mongolian conquerors, Iran was often subject to foreign domination. Yet the Persian language and culture withstood these invasions. The invaders assimilated into this strong culture, and in some ways they became Iranians themselves (introduction page 1).

           It is a very good book and I think that she achieved her purpose.