The Comics Bildungsroman: Analysing the Depiction of Marjane Satrapi's Development in Persepolis

Persepolis 1 & 2
Written and Drawn by: Marjane Satrapi
Analysis by: J. Kyle LeBel

Among the most endearing storytelling modes is the bildungsroman, the novel of development from childhood into adolescence. Literary classics from many epochs are stories of development, ranging from Dickens’ Great Expectations (1860-61) to Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981). There is a resonance to stories about charming characters growing up that makes the bildungsroman not only timeless, but compatible to any storytelling medium, including graphic novels. Among the finest graphic bildungsromans is Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a series spanning two volumes that masterfully utilizes the visual and textual elements of a graphic novel to demonstrate Marjane’s personal and psychological growth. Through the two volumes (in English translation), Satrapi’s treatment of the visual and textual aspects of the graphic novel demonstrate an author who understands the capabilities of the medium, and uses the available rhetorical devices to chart Marjane’s personal development. For the first volume, Marjane’s story is predominantly quick paced and visual based. Yet in the second volume, Satrapi utilizes the textual aspects of the graphic novel to a greater extent, slowing the pacing to show a worldly and articulate heroine.

Throughout both volumes, Satrapi’s visual inventiveness when creating non-diegetic images brilliantly captures Marjane’s states of mind and her feelings regarding her place within a changing Iran. These images take on psychological slants, such as the large panel in volume one of Marjane floating through outer space, representing her feeling of dislocation within the world (Satrapi 71), or when Marjane depicts herself as a warped Hulk-like figure as a representation of the transformations she undergoes during puberty in volume two (Satrapi 35/1). These images also take metaphorical slants, as when Marjane depicts herself behind prison bars in volume two (163/7), linking her future life as a married woman to life as a prisoner. Through the aforementioned compositions, and many others, Satrapi exhibits full understanding of how the graphic novel medium can form meaning through the visuals, and utilizes her artwork to its fullest effect in relaying crucial information regarding the storyline, and her own state of mind.
Yet there are marked differences between the interplay of words and images in each volume of Persepolis, as these differences rhetorically convey the maturation of Marjane as a human being. Most of the panels in Persepolis 1 contain what Scott McCloud describes as “duo-specific images” (153), images where the text and drawings relay the similar amounts of information with regards to the storyline. Conversely, many of Satrapi’s panels in volume 2 feature more “word-specific images [where the] pictures illustrate, but do not add significantly to a text” (McCloud 153). The increased focus on words within the panels demonstrates the growth of Marjane as a character, because the much of the imagery steeped in a child’s imagination from Persepolis 1 is replaced by more verbal descriptions of her thoughts and actions. For example, a typical image found in Persepolis 1 is one where Marjane imagines herself operating outside of her physical capabilities as a child—or as a human being. One image emblematic of this is where she sees herself as a devil in her mirror, complete with horns brimming from her head, while saying she “had a diabolical feeling of power” (53/5). Such an image highlights the range a child’s imagination can take, doing so with equal integration of the visual and the textual.

Meanwhile, a common panel in Persepolis 2 is one where Marjane will describe a character she has relations with, or an event she attended, while using the image in the panel for merely supplemental purposes. One example of this occurs when she speaks of her brief relationship with Markus, a boy she meets while attending school in Vienna, and why the relationship failed. She says “I no longer condemn him. Markus had a history, a family, friends. I had no one but him” (Satrapi 83/6), while the image she depicts is of Markus and his people surrounding him. While important people in Markus’ life are in the image, their depiction is secondary, as Satrapi’s words describing Markus and her relationship to him is the primary focal-point in the panel. Even a crucial panel in Persepolis 2’s climax features a word-specific panel, as Marjane’s dialogue is the only portion of the panel containing relevant information to the plot. “I can’t take it anymore. I want to leave this country” (183/3) exclaims Marjane while she sits in a car with her friend. Though Marjane is making a grand declaration regarding her intentions to permanently leave her homeland, Satrapi opts not to depict the facial expressions of her younger-self as she makes one of the most important statements in her life. Instead, Satrapi shows Marjane’s speech bubble seeping out the car, while the car drives through the Tehran cityscape. Truth be told, the Tehran cityscape makes the reader aware of the setting, a place Marjane’s declares her intention to leave. However, the words are the primary focus of the scene, and the streets of Tehran and the large mountain in the backdrop has no direct relation to Marjane’s words, while her statement is the main focal point of the panel.

To be fair, Persepolis as a series may not be a bildungsroman in the truest sense. It is not a “novel of development,” since the term novel implies a work of fiction, and Persepolis is entirely real. But it is a story of growth, and a story of maturation, while Satrapi is far more candid in the retelling of her life story than most people would be. The growth of Marjane from childhood to adulthood shows real development through the artistic possibilities of the comics medium, and the interplay between text and image varies greatly in Persepolis 1 and Persepolis 2. The first part is a visual and textually equal story, where a child’s imagination runs wild, while the shift towards the textual in the second part marks Marjane’s intellectual maturation, with greater emphasis placed on some of the textual elements instead of the visual elements. Together, Persepolis becomes not only a story of growth, but a story showcasing a true understanding of the rhetorical tools at available within the comics medium. Satrapi’s use of the available rhetorical means enables Persepolis to be just as emotionally and intellectually resonant as any purely textual bildungsroman that came before it.

Note: Persepolis is available as seperate volumes in the UWindsor Leddy Library. It is also available as one volume titled The Complete Persepolis, which can be found at retail bookstores and online. The above analysis used the separate volumes from Leddy for the analysis, though I personally recommend picking up The Complete Persepolis.