Key Quotations (DP IB English A: Language and Literature: HL): Revision Note

When you answer any question on Persepolis, remember to support your points with references. You can evidence your knowledge of the text in two equally valid ways: both through references to it and direct quotations from it. In a graphic memoir, close reading means attending to both the verbal text and the visual choices Satrapi makes, the two working together to create meaning.

A good idea is to group evidence by theme so you can see how Satrapi develops ideas across the whole text. Below you will find definitions and analysis of key quotations arranged by the following themes:

• Identity and self

• Political oppression and resistance

• Religion and faith

• Gender and the female body

• Family and belonging

• War and its human cost

Page numbers refer to the Jonathan Cape 2003 edition (translated by Mattias Ripa and Blake Ferris).

Identity and self 

Satrapi uses Persepolis to explore how identity is formed, contested and defended. Marji's sense of self is shaped by competing forces: her family's secular, progressive values; the revolutionary Islamic state; and Western cultural influences she absorbs covertly. The bildungsroman structure traces how she gradually learns to distinguish between who she is and who the regime demands she be. 

Meaning and context

• This caption opens the second page of the graphic narrative, establishing Marji's extraordinary childhood confidence:

  • Satrapi sets this conviction before the revolution, showing it is innate rather than reactive

  • The visual panel shows young Marji in a divine spotlight, reinforcing the grandiosity of her self-belief

• The statement is both comic and sincere,Satrapi presents it without irony, inviting the reader to take Marji's inner world seriously

Analysis

• Child focalisation allows Satrapi to present political complexity through an innocent but perceptive narrator:

  • The choice to open with Marji's prophetic self-image establishes identity as the text's central concern

• The adjective "sure" signals a confidence the regime will later attempt to dismantle:

  • This certainty contrasts with the confusion and self-questioning of later chapters, charting the cost of oppression on Marji's sense of self.

• The bildungsroman structure depends on this moment of complete, unjaded identity as a baseline from which the reader can measure loss and recovery

Meaning and context

• Marji smokes a stolen cigarette as an act of rebellion against her mother's authority and the regime's control over her:

  • The act is framed as a rite of passage, though one achieved through defiance rather than natural development

• Satrapi presents growing up in wartime Iran as an accelerated, involuntary process:

  • The chapter context (mass executions, the intensifying war) makes this moment bitterly ironic

Analysis

• The symbolic gesture of the cigarette condenses complex themes of resistance, loss and maturation into a single image:

  • Smoking is an act forbidden by the regime and disapproved of by her mother : Marji asserts selfhood by defying both

• Dramatic irony operates here: the reader understands that what Marji experiences as liberation is partly the trauma of war forcing premature adulthood

• The declarative final sentence "Now I was a grown-up" has a forced, hollow quality that undercuts the apparent triumph

Political oppression and resistance 

Satrapi presents political oppression not through abstract history but through its intrusion into everyday life: dress codes, school curricula, university closures and street violence. Resistance in Persepolis is rarely dramatic: it takes the form of humour, intellectual inquiry, cultural defiance and family loyalty. 

Meaning and context

• This caption appears immediately after the panel showing girls being segregated into different schools by gender and religion:

  • The compulsory veil has been imposed and bilingual schools closed, and this single sentence captures both losses simultaneously

• The pronoun "we" is significant: Satrapi positions this as a collective experience rather than only her own

Analysis

• The passive construction "found ourselves" emphasises that the change was imposed on the children with no agency on their part

• The pairing of "veiled" and "separated" links the physical imposition of the veil to psychological and social fragmentation:

  • Satrapi compresses enormous political change into a simple, child-voiced observation, making the human cost visceral 

• Visual and verbal irony: 

  • The panel shows the girls playing with their veils, using them as horse reins, monsters and props, undercutting the regime's attempt at control

Meaning and context

• Marji overhears adults laughing about the Shah's massacres and cannot understand how humour is possible in the face of atrocity:

  • Rather than accepting her confusion, she turns to reading, framing intellectual inquiry as her response to political incomprehension

• The panel shows her holding a book titled "The Reasons for the Revolution", surrounded by a growing stack of texts

Analysis

• The sentence "I didn't understand anything" is pivotal and  it marks the moment Marji recognises the gap between her childish understanding and political reality

• The act of reading functions as resistance because Marji seeks knowledge the regime is actively suppressing through curriculum reform:

  • Satrapi implies that intellectual independence is itself a political act under the Islamic Republic 

• Bildungsroman convention: 

  • The protagonist's growing self-knowledge is driven by political crisis rather than personal experience alone

Religion and faith 

Religion in Persepolis is treated with complexity: Marji's personal faith is sincere and intimate, while the state's use of Islam is presented as cynical and violent. The text distinguishes between authentic spiritual life and religion as a tool of political control. 

Meaning and context

• This follows immediately from the panel of a newborn Marji bathed in divine light:

  • Satrapi presents faith as innate rather than imposed: Marji did not choose religion, it is part of her nature

• The brevity of the statement gives it certainty and weight

Analysis

• The declarative simplicity of the sentence performs the child narrator's unselfconscious confidence

• By establishing faith as natural, Satrapi sharpens the later tragedy when Marji expels God after Anoosh's execution,the loss of faith becomes a loss of an essential part of herself:

  • The visual of a radiant baby floating in divine light confirms the sincerity of the claim and resists ironic reading

• This is central to Satrapi's argument that the regime's weaponisation of religion is a distortion, not an expression, of genuine faith 

Meaning and context

• Marji screams at God the night after learning that her beloved Uncle Anoosh has been executed by the Islamic Republic:

  • God has appeared in previous chapters as a large, benevolent white-bearded figure, a companion to Marji's nightly conversations

• This is the last time God appears as a visual character in the text

Analysis

• The violent outburst marks the end of Marji's childhood faith as her personal religion cannot survive the reality of the regime's violence

• Dramatic irony is presented when the Islamic Republic kills in God's name, but this act destroys faith in God rather than reinforcing it:

  • Satrapi distinguishes between the regime's God and Marji's God: the former is a political instrument, the latter a genuine relationship 

• The expulsion of God from the visual narrative has structural significance in that the loss of faith marks the end of Marji's religious childhood and the beginning of her political coming of age

Paired quotations

Meaning and context

• The first quotation comes from the early chapters when Marji has nightly conversations with God about her prophetic ambitions:

  • These discussions are intimate and playful as God is a confidant and collaborator

• The grandmother's advice is given the night before Marji leaves for Austria, replacing God as Marji's moral guide:

  • The grandmother has lived through decades of political upheaval and distils her survival philosophy into this speech

Analysis

• Together these quotations chart a transition in Marji's moral framework from divine authority to human wisdom

• The grandmother's advice is entirely secular as it depends on dignity, self-knowledge and understanding of human cruelty, not on God's will: 

  • This transition is central to Marji's coming-of-age: she learns to locate moral authority within herself and her family rather than in religion

• Satrapi presents the grandmother as the text's most reliable moral voice; her advice outlasts every political system depicted in the book

Gender and the female body

The veil is the text's central symbol of gendered oppression, but Satrapi's treatment of gender is broader than dress codes alone. She shows how the Islamic Republic regulates women's bodies, education, movement and public speech, and how women, including Marji and her mother, resist this regulation.

Meaning and context

• Marji has just learned that universities are to be closed for a "Cultural Revolution" purge of decadent and imperialist influence:

  • She had dreamed of studying chemistry and becoming like Marie Curie, as explicitly stated in the surrounding panels

• The hyperbole of accepting cancer rather than abandoning education is both comic and politically pointed

Analysis

• The phrase "educated, liberated woman" directly challenges the regime's vision of female identity, which centres on religious conformity and domestic roles

• The allusion to Marie Curie is significant because Curie is a symbol of female intellectual achievement in a male-dominated field, and also a foreigner, both qualities the regime would reject:

  • Satrapi uses the comic exaggeration of "getting cancer" to make a serious point: knowledge is worth mortal risk 

• The visual of Marji imagining herself as Marie Curie reinforces how aspiration and imagination function as resistance under oppression

Meaning and context

• The full-page panel that follows this caption shows rows of identically veiled, identically expressionless girls in forced mourning:

  • The visual effect is one of mass deindividuation: the girls are indistinguishable from one another

• This is one of the text's most powerful visual arguments about the regime's treatment of female identity

Analysis

• The full-page visual composition does work the verbal text alone cannot: it shows what enforced conformity looks like as a lived, physical experience

• Compulsory mourning is a form of ideological coercion; the regime commandeers the girls' bodies and emotions for political theatre:

  • The gesture of beating the breast is a culturally specific act of grief that has been instrumentalised as a political performance 

• Satrapi's decision to make all the faces nearly identical is a visual indictment of the regime's erasure of female individuality

Family and belonging

The Satrapi family is the moral and emotional centre of Persepolis. Marji's parents and grandmother model intellectual independence, courage and love. Against a regime that attempts to atomise society, the family unit is itself a form of resistance.

Meaning and context

• Uncle Anoosh speaks this line during their final meeting in Evin Prison, ten minutes before Marji must leave:

  • Anoosh was arrested as a Russian spy, a charge that is a pretext for political persecution

• He has made Marji a bread-swan, a gift he previously gave her as a child, connecting the meeting to their shared past

Analysis

• The line operates simultaneously as an expression of genuine love and as a farewell as Anoosh knows he faces execution

• By claiming Marji as a surrogate daughter, Anoosh asserts the primacy of family bonds over political ideology and he dies holding this human relationship:

  • The contrast between the prison setting and the tenderness of the line is part of Satrapi's consistent technique of placing private emotion against political horror

• Marji's grief after this meeting, including her expulsion of God, shows how family loss has a more profound effect on her than any political event

Meaning and context

• This advice is given on the night before Marji leaves Iran for Austria, the two lying together in bed:

  • The grandmother has kept jasmine flowers in her brassiere each morning of her life, a small private ritual of beauty described earlier on the same page

• The advice comes at the text's emotional climax as this is the moment of permanent departure

Analysis

• The grandmother's moral code is entirely secular and humanist as it depends on self-knowledge, dignity and contempt for pettiness rather than on religious or political authority

• The phrase "be true to yourself" is the text's moral climax, the one instruction that will guide Marji through everything that follows:

  • Satrapi positions the grandmother as the text's most durable moral authority, outlasting every political system depicted

• The intimate setting (two women in bed, speaking honestly) contrasts with the public performances of loyalty the regime demands: private truth against public ideology

War and its human cost

The Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) forms the backdrop of the second half of Persepolis. Satrapi refuses to treat war as a heroic spectacle. Instead she focuses on its cost to ordinary people; children sent to the front with plastic keys promising paradise, civilian neighbourhoods bombed, families split by exile.

Meaning and context

• Mrs. Nasrine, the family's maid, shows Marji a plastic key painted gold, given to her son by the school authorities:

  • The panel shows a large hand holding the key in close-up; the only object on an otherwise black page

• Mrs. Nasrine has raised five children on the wages of a maid and cannot believe the state now wants to send her son to die

Analysis

• The plastic key is one of the text's most damning symbols as it is a worthless object dressed up as a divine promise, used to send poor children to their deaths

• Satrapi makes an explicit class argument that the regime recruits "boys from poor areas" (as Shahab puts it on p.101) and that the wealthy families find ways to avoid the front:

  • Mrs. Nasrine's line, "I've suffered so much... now they want to trade this key for my oldest son", is presented without irony or authorial comment, allowing the injustice to speak for itself

• The visual close-up of the key gives it a weight disproportionate to its physical worth, reflecting the monstrous value placed on it by the regime

Meaning and context

• Marji has accompanied her parents to a demonstration against fundamentalism. Men with clubs attack the crowd:

  • Her father is caught in the violence. The panel shows Marji calling for him in panic

• Until this moment, political violence has been reported to Marji by adults, so this is her first direct encounter

Analysis

• The line marks a threshold moment in Marji's coming-of-age;witnessed violence can no longer be processed through the comfortable framework of books or stories

• Satrapi is precise about the mechanism "with my own eyes" distinguishes this from everything Marji has read or been told:

  • The accompanying panel is kinetic and chaotic; bodies in motion, clubs raised, contrasting with the stillness of earlier domestic and classroom scenes

• The text's consistent move from private space to public violence reflects Satrapi's argument that the regime cannot be contained as it intrudes on every aspect of life, including childhood

Sources

International Baccalaureate Organization (2021) Language A: Language and Literature Guide. Cardiff: International Baccalaureate Organization.

Satrapi, M. (2003) Persepolis. London: Jonathan Cape. Translated by Mattias Ripa and Blake Ferris.