Essay Assignment #2 - Persepolis

For your essay on Persepolis, please choose from among the essay questions below, or come up with your own. Your essay should be between five to six pages and is due on
November 24th. I've also included some tips on constructing a thesis statement. We will discuss essay topics in class. Thanks and looking forward to reading your essays.


Possible Essay Questions for Persepolis


1. In an Associated Press interview, Satrapi said, “The only thing I hope is that people will read my book and see that this abstract thing, this Axis of Evil, is made up of individuals with lives and hopes.” And in her introduction to Persepolis, she explains that she wrote this book to show that Iran is not only a country of “fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism.” How does Satrapi go about challenging this myth? How does Persepolis dispel or confirm your views on Iran? In what ways does reading this book deepen your understanding and knowledge of Iran, and the current situation in Iraq?

2. “Every situation has an opportunity for laughs.” (p. 97) Give some examples of how the ordinary citizens of Iran enjoyed life despite the oppressive regime. What made you laugh? How does Satrapi add comic relief? How are these scenes relevant to the story as a whole?

3. What kinds of captivity and freedom does the author explore in Persepolis? What stifles or prevents people from being completely free? How do they circumvent and defy the rules imposed on them and attempt to live ordinary lives despite revolution and war? Give some examples of their small acts of rebellion.

4. What is the role of women in the story? Compare and contrast the various women: Marji, her mother, her grandmother, her school teachers, the maid, the neighbors, the guardians of the revolution.

5. In what ways is Persepolis both telling a story and commenting on the importance of stories in our lives? What does the book suggest about how stories shape and give meaning to our experience? Discuss some of the stories in Persepolis—Uncle Anoosh’s story, the stories propagated by the media – both interior and exterior to the Iranian government, and .

6. What is Satrapi suggesting about the relationship between past and present, and between national and personal history? What role does her family history, and the stories of her relatives, play in shaping Marji?

7. What does Satrapi say regarding disparity between the classes before and after the Iranian Revolution? Discuss some examples that Marji witnesses and contemplates.
8. Marji has a complicated, shifting relationship with her parents. What is important to Marji’s parents? What environment do they create for their daughter despite living under an oppressive regime and through a brutal, prolonged war? From where do they get their strength? What are their expectations for her and how - if at all - do these expectations shape her?



Thesis vs. Topic
As you begin to formulate a thesis for your essay, think about the following distinction between topic and thesis. A topic is a general area of inquiry; derived from the Greek topos (place), "topic" designates the general subject of your essay. For instance, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (2003) “shows how a totalitarian state oppresses women” would be a weak thesis but a very good a topic for an essay. From a topic, many specific theses can be extracted and developed. A thesis is more specific and delimited; it exists “within” your topic. In your essay, you need to use an argumentative thesis.
In argumentative writing, the writer takes a stance and offers reasons in support of it. Crucial to any piece of argumentative writing is its thesis. The thesis arises from the topic, or subject, on which the writing focuses, and may be defined as follows:
A thesis is an idea, stated as an assertion, which represents a reasoned response to a question at issue and which will serve as the central idea of a unified composition.
If we've selected as a topic the notion that Persepolis shows the power of unions we need to ask, "So what?" How does Persepolis depict oppression? How does the regime maintain its power over those it oppresses? In other words, does the graphic novel show the mechanisms by which totalitarianism gains control and, in so doing, show how it might be resisted? In sum, what does focusing on this theme tells about what the Persepolis might mean? One possible thesis is:
Although Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (2003) depicts the growth of a totalitarian state through different subjective responses, including both Marjane the child and Marjane the adult, Persepolis confronts power head-on, challenging the "righteousness" of the regime through these subjective responses by dramatizing how it hurts the people who must live under it.
This thesis could, of course, be different. Indeed, one could construct a thesis that challenges the above thesis. And that's one of the reasons we know that the above thesis works: it's contestable!
When you compose a thesis statement, think about how it satisfies the following tests:
1. Is it an idea? Does it state, in a complete sentence, an assertion?
2. Does it make a claim that is truly contestable and therefore engaging?
(Yes, because one could also argue that in fact the force of both novels resides in how they dramatize the deleterious effects of a totalitarian regime.)
3. Are the terms you are using precise and clear?
(Key terms here seem to be: "totalitarian state," "resistance," "power," and "confronts head-on.")
4. Has the thesis developed out of a process of reasoning?
Once these questions have been satisfactorily answered, use the resulting thesis to organize your evidence and begin the actual writing. As you do so, bear in mind the following questions:
1. What is my purpose in writing? What do I want to prove?
(Notice the explicit purpose in the thesis statement: it does not merely point out that both books show the how totalitarian states oppress women. Instead, the thesis takes a position on this topic, and then answers the question "So what?")
2. What question(s) does my writing answer?
3. Why do I think this question is important? Will other people think it equally important?
4. What are my specific reasons, my pieces of evidence? Does each piece of evidence support the claim I make in my thesis?
5. Where does my reasoning weaken or even stop? Am I merely offering opinions without reasoned evidence?
6. How can I best persuade my reader?