As a teenager, Marjane goes by the name Marji. Marji is very different from an average girl of her age as she rarely played with racecars and dolls. At the age of ten, Marji is an avid religious believer who hopes to become a prophet. She even has an illustration of herself as a baby with a halo on her head, and she claims that “I was born with religion,” (Satrapi, 2000) . This young girl has to grow up during an era of war, revolution, and turmoil, something that completely changes her character and beliefs. When the novel begins, Marji is a naïve and innocent young girl who had no idea of how severe the turmoil in her country was. She has no idea how bad people in her country are being tortured to the point of making fun of it. She says, “Those stories had given me new ideas for games. I have imagination too…” (Satrapi 53). Marji has no idea what was going on around her.
Marji’s life changes after her city was bombed and her Uncle Anoosh got killed. Marji’s view of the world shifts to the point where she states, “And so I was lost, without any bearings…What could be worse than that?” (Satrapi 71). From this point, Marji loses her innocence and becomes a rebellious child. She starts smoking cigarettes and dressing inappropriately while in public. She wears denim jackets, Nike sneakers, and tight jeans, just like a typical American teenager.
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As an adult, Marjane easily makes friends and romantic relationships but has a hard time keeping them to the point that she ends up being divorced. Just like she was as a teenager, adult Marjane has low self-esteem, which is probably why she has a hard time maintaining relationships. Marjane has low self-worth and while in Vienna, she stays homeless to the point of coughing up blood, and her excuse is, “it was a banal story of love that almost carried me away,” (Satrapi 87) . When she falls into depression, Marjane seeks medical help, but the anti-depressants end up making her suicidal. After surviving her suicide attempt, Marjane makes a shift in her life, takes charge of her identity, and becomes an aerobics trainer.
As a child, Marjane was very close to her parents because at the time she held to her innocence and was obedient. At that time, her parents shy away from telling her the truth about the world, and this makes her a naïve young girl. However, as life changed and her innocence got stripped away, Marjane becomes disrespectful to her parents in the way she dresses and even when she smokes cigarettes, and this scars their relationship. However, when she falls into depression at a later stage, her parents become a leaning shoulder for her.
Several characters affect the transitioning of Marjane’s character from the point she was Marji. Of all these, I believe the character of God had the biggest impact on Marjane’s character development. When she was young, Marjane had a deep relationship with God to the point that He appeared in her dreams to reveal her destiny to her. In as much as the relationship gets strained over the years, God kept on showing up in her dreams when she was low, and this was critical for keeping Marjane sane (Satrapi, 2000).
Through all this life and character changes, imagination is one thing that remains important to Marjane because it gives her the trace of innocence that she had while growing up. However, as she grows up and gets to experience life as it is, her imagination becomes more informed from a point of knowledge and not naivety as was the case initially. There is also hope that Marjane eventually finds peace with God. When she attempts suicide and it fails, Marjane reaches a point where she truly wants to know her identity. At these points, I believe that she was able to get peace from her initial source, which had always been God.
References
Satrapi, M. (2000). Persepolis (1st ed.). L'Association, Pantheon Books.
