IB Reads and Thinks and Talks

Thinking of the book as a graphic text, with a focus on word and image as devices for storytelling: Why do you think Satrapi chose to tell her story in words and images?  What does the combination make possible that words or images alone would not? How would you describe the style of Satrapi’s drawings?  How does this style contribute to the story that she tells? How does this style limit the way the story is told? What particular incidents in the story do you think are conveyed more effectively in pictures than they could have been in words alone?

Thinking of the book as a coming-of-age story, with a focus on connections to readers’ own lives, answer one of the following questions: What stages do you recognize in Marji’s attempts to understand justice and forgiveness? What forms does teenage rebellion take among Marjane and her friends?  To what extent are they like teenagers everywhere? How are they different? Several times in Satrapi’s narrative, Marjane seems to hit bottom and decides to remake herself.  How are these various new selves related to each other?

Thinking of the book as a memoir, with a focus on memory, truth, and representation, answer one of these questions: What difference does it make to your reading that this book is a memoir, a rendering of Marjane Satrapi’s own life, rather than a fictional story about life in Iran? American writer William Zinsser has written that “humor is the writer’s armor against the hard emotions.”  Is this the way that Satrapi seems to be using humor when she says that “every situation offered an opportunity for laughs” (97) and again that laughter is “the only way to bear the unbearable” (266)?  What instances of humor stand out to you? Why? How are the personal stories of individual citizens related to the history of their nation?

Thinking of the book as a portrait of a culture, with a focus on social practices and traditions, answer one of these questions: What does the book suggest about the role of religion in Iranian culture, especially in the lives of people like Marjane’s family? What does the book suggest about social class in Iranian society, especially, for example, in the story of the courtship between the family’s maid and their neighbor (34-37) or the distribution of keys to paradise to boys drafted into the army (99-102)? What are the roles for women in Iranian society as depicted in the book?  How do Marjane and her mother and grandmother both play into and resist those roles?

Thinking of the book as political reportage, with a focus on the reporting of events, answer one of these questions: How is revolution portrayed in the book?  In Satrapi’s account, what are the stages of the revolution and what do these stages mean for the Iranian people? How are America and American culture represented in the book? Towards the end of the book, Marjane says about people’s fear of the Islamic Commission, “It’s only natural!  When we’re afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection.  Our fear paralyzes us.  Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators’ repression” (302).  How do Marjane and her compatriots deal with fear in their daily lives?  To what extent do you see fear as a controlling factor in your own country’s public life?