Now that you know about the ancient city, we are going to talk about the similarities between the city and the graphic novel.
In this book Iran, the country the main character, Marjane lives in, is going through a huge political and religious change and Marjane’s once diverse school is separated by sex while the girls are forced to wear veils over their head.
The population of Iran is forced to adapt to the new ways or face the consequences one faces when they go against the new regime. This this is similar to the ancient city as well. The people they considered to be gods had their temples torn down and a new political power took over.
Both populations had to adapt to this change otherwise face the dangers of speaking out.
The site of ancient Persepolis is known as a Heritage site. This means that a lot of the customs and culture of Iran today stemmed from the diverse past that all centered around Persepolis. To people like Marjane’s family, that culture is very important and dear to their hearts, even in time of great change, like their government getting overthrown by the Islamic Fundamentalists that did not like the modernization of their country being taken over by the western world.
With the new political regime came a more conservative religious approach to the way the government was being ruled. Because of this, many protests arose and with that came violence and harsh punishment like jail time and death.
These punishments are shown throughout the book with Marjane’s uncle anoosh who was arrested and executed in the book. because of the parallels of emotion that the people of the past must have felt when being taken over by a new ruler, and the way the people of iran must have felt under the conservative regime and the important heritage and cultural roots the ancient city of persepolis symbolizes to the people of iran, even through all the changes the new regime brought with, this title is very fitting for this book.
Presented by Isabella French