Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

by

Marjane Satrapi

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Marjane Satrapi Character Analysis

Marjane is the graphic novel’s protagonist; it follows her from age 14 to age 24. Marjane is proud of her Iranian identity, but she’s also very liberal and independent, which sometimes makes her feel like an outsider in Tehran. This is why she attends high school in Vienna; her parents feared for her safety in Iran. In Vienna, though, Marjane is shocked to find out that her new friends are all sexually active and do drugs. Although Marjane initially pretends to smoke joints just to fit in, she eventually becomes a heavy drug user. Using drugs helps Marjane ignore how unhappy she is and the fact that she knows her parents wouldn’t be proud of her. She has several boyfriends in Vienna and has sex with Markus, her last and most serious European boyfriend. But when Marjane realizes that Markus is cheating on her, Marjane gives up on life. After a period of homelessness and a bout of bronchitis, Marjane returns to Tehran. She expects to feel at home there, but instead, Marjane feels even more out of place than she did in Vienna. When she learns about what her parents experienced over the course of the recently concluded Iran-Iraq War, Marjane is overcome with guilt and vows not to speak about what happened to her in Vienna, since it feels insignificant by comparison. However, Marjane becomes depressed and attempts suicide. When she fails, she decides she’s supposed to live and reinvents herself entirely. Her future husband, Reza, falls in love with this version of Marjane that wears makeup, fancy clothes, and seems European. To Marjane, Reza represents a connection to the Iran-Iraq War, since he’s a veteran. Though Marjane feels compelled to marry Reza two years after they meet, she regrets it immediately. They ultimately divorce when Marjane decides she can’t live in Iran anymore. Throughout the graphic novel, Marjane is rebellious and unafraid to stand up for herself. But she also cares deeply about pleasing her parents. Leaving Iran is the only way she believes she’ll be able to combine her Iranian upbringing with her Western sensibilities, and she describes her departure at the end of the novel as finally achieving freedom.

Marjane Satrapi Quotes in Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

The Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return quotes below are all either spoken by Marjane Satrapi or refer to Marjane Satrapi. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Growing Up and Growing Old Theme Icon
).
Tyrol Quotes

She introduced me to Momo. He was two years older.

“This is Marjane. She’s Iranian. She’s known war.”

“War?”

“Delighted!”

“You’ve already seen lots of dead people?”

“Um... a few.”

“Cool!”

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Julie (speaker), Momo (speaker)
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:
Pasta Quotes

For me, not going to school was synonymous with solitude, especially now that Lucia was spending all her time with her boyfriend, Klaus.

“Do you have a problem with vacation?”

“No! But you see, at home, we had two weeks of rest for the new year and after that we had to wait until summer.”

“You’ll get used to it. Thanks to the left, there are holidays in Europe. We are not forced to work all the time [...] Come on, relax, take advantage! You don’t even know Bakunin!”

[...]

This cretin Momo wasn’t altogether wrong. I needed to fit in, and for that I needed to educate myself.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Julie (speaker), Momo (speaker), Lucia
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

In every religion, you find the same extremists.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), The Mother Superior
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
The Pill Quotes

That night, I really understood the meaning of “the sexual revolution.” It was my first big step toward assimilating into Western culture.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Julie
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:
The Vegetable Quotes

“Whatever! Existence is not absurd. There are people who believe in it and who give their lives for values like liberty.”

“What rubbish! Even that, it’s a distraction from boredom.”

“So my uncle died to distract himself?”

For Momo, death was the only domain where my knowledge exceeded his. On this subject, I always had the last word.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Momo (speaker)
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

The harder I tried to assimilate, the more I had the feeling that I was distancing myself from my culture, betraying my parents and my origins, that I was playing a game by somebody else’s rules. Each telephone call from my parents reminded me of my cowardice and my betrayal. I was at once happy to hear their voices and ashamed to talk to them.

[...]

If only they knew...if they knew that their daughter was made up like a punk, that she smoked joints to make a good impression, that she had seen men in their underwear while they were being bombed every day, they wouldn’t call me their dream child.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad, Marjane’s Mother/Mom, Julie, Momo
Related Symbols: Makeup and the Veil
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
The Horse Quotes

“It’s amazing how you’ve grown.”

I didn’t repeat that she, too, had changed. At her age, you don’t grow up, you grow old.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Mother/Mom (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad
Page Number: 47
Explanation and Analysis:

In the letter, he was overjoyed by the thought that I had a peaceful life in Vienna. I had the impression that he didn’t realize what I was enduring.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
Hide and Seek Quotes

I’d already heard this threatening word yelled at me in the metro. It was an old man who said “dirty foreigner, get out!” I had heard it another time on the street. But I tried to make light of it. I thought that it was just the reaction of a nasty old man.

But this, this was different. It was neither an old man destroyed by the war, nor a young idiot. It was my boyfriend’s mother who attacked me. She was saying that I was taking advantage of Markus and his situation to obtain an Austrian passport, that I was a witch.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Markus
Page Number: 66
Explanation and Analysis:
The Croissant Quotes

What do you want me to say, sir? That I’m the vegetable that I refused to become?

That I’m so disappointed in myself that I can no longer look at myself in the mirror? That I hate myself?

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
The Veil Quotes

I had known a revolution that had made me lose part of my family.

I had survived a war that had distanced me from my country and my parents...

...And it’s a banal story of love that almost carried me away.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Markus
Page Number: 87
Explanation and Analysis:

Despite the doctor’s orders, I bought myself several cartons of cigarettes.

[...]

I think that I preferred to put myself in serious danger rather than confront my shame. My shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made my parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for me. The shame of having become a mediocre nihilist.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad, Marjane’s Mother/Mom
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
The Return Quotes

There were people everywhere. Each passenger was being met by a dozen people. Suddenly, amongst the crowd, I spotted my parents...

...But it wasn’t reciprocal. Of course it made sense. One changes more between the ages of fourteen and eighteen than between thirty and forty.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad, Marjane’s Mother/Mom
Page Number: 92
Explanation and Analysis:

“Ah, there’s nothing like Iranian tea!”

“Oh yes, especially with a cigarette. Do you want one?”

“Mom!!”

“What? You know the proverb: ‘prosperity consists of two things: tea after a meal, and a cigarette after tea.’”

It was the first time that my mother had spoken to me in this tone: in her eyes now, I had become an adult.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Mother/Mom (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad
Page Number: 95
Explanation and Analysis:

Many had changed names. They were now called Martyr what’s-his-name Avenue or Martyr something-or-other Street.

It was very unsettling.

I felt as though I were walking through a cemetery.

...Surrounded by the victims of a war I had fled.

It was unbearable. I hurried home.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:

Next to my father’s distressing report, my Viennese misadventures seemed like little anecdotes of no importance. So I decided that I would never tell them anything about my Austrian life. They had suffered enough as it was.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad, Marjane’s Mother/Mom
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:
Skiing Quotes

Certainly, they’d had to endure the war, but they had each other and close by. They had never known the confusion of being a third-worlder, they had always had a home! At the same time, how could they have pitied me? I was so shut off. I kept repeating to myself that I mustn’t crack up.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad, Marjane’s Mother/Mom, Marjane’s Grandmother
Page Number: 113
Explanation and Analysis:

“What do you mean? You’ve done the deed with many people?”

“Well, I mean...I’ve had a few experiences.”

“So what’s the difference between you and a whore???”

Underneath their outward appearance of being modern women, my friends were real traditionalists.

They were overrun by hormones and frustration, which explained their aggressiveness toward me. To them, I had become a decadent Western woman.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:

But as soon as the effect of the pills wore off, I once again became conscious. My calamity could be summarized in one sentence: I was nothing. I was a Westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn’t even know anymore why I was living.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
The Exam Quotes

He sought in me a lost lightheartedness. And I sought in him a war which I had escaped. In short, we complemented each other.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Reza
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
The Convocation Quotes

I applied myself. Designing the “model” that would please both the administration and the interested parties wasn’t easy. I made dozens of sketches.

This was the result of my research. Though subtle, these differences meant a lot to us.

This little rebellion reconciled my grandmother and me. [...] And this is how I recovered my self-esteem and my dignity. For the first time in a long time, I was happy with myself.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Grandmother
Related Symbols: Makeup and the Veil
Page Number: 144
Explanation and Analysis:
The Socks Quotes

The regime had understood that one person leaving herself while asking herself: Are my trousers long enough? Is my veil in place? Can my makeup be seen? Are they going to whip me?

No longer asks herself: Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What’s going on in the political prisons?

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Related Symbols: Makeup and the Veil
Page Number: 148
Explanation and Analysis:

I didn’t say everything I could have: that she was frustrated because she was still a virgin at twenty-seven! That she was forbidding me what was forbidden to her! That to marry someone that you don’t know, for his money, is prostitution. That despite her locks of hair and her lipstick, she was acting like the state.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Related Symbols: Makeup and the Veil
Page Number: 149
Explanation and Analysis:
The Wedding Quotes

When the apartment door closed, I had a bizarre feeling. I was already sorry! I had suddenly become “a married woman.” I had conformed to society, while I had always wanted to remain in the margins. In my mind, “a married woman” wasn’t like me. It required too many compromises. I couldn’t accept it, but it was too late.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Reza, Marjane’s Father/Dad
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
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Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return PDF

Marjane Satrapi Quotes in Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

The Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return quotes below are all either spoken by Marjane Satrapi or refer to Marjane Satrapi. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Growing Up and Growing Old Theme Icon
).
Tyrol Quotes

She introduced me to Momo. He was two years older.

“This is Marjane. She’s Iranian. She’s known war.”

“War?”

“Delighted!”

“You’ve already seen lots of dead people?”

“Um... a few.”

“Cool!”

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Julie (speaker), Momo (speaker)
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:
Pasta Quotes

For me, not going to school was synonymous with solitude, especially now that Lucia was spending all her time with her boyfriend, Klaus.

“Do you have a problem with vacation?”

“No! But you see, at home, we had two weeks of rest for the new year and after that we had to wait until summer.”

“You’ll get used to it. Thanks to the left, there are holidays in Europe. We are not forced to work all the time [...] Come on, relax, take advantage! You don’t even know Bakunin!”

[...]

This cretin Momo wasn’t altogether wrong. I needed to fit in, and for that I needed to educate myself.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Julie (speaker), Momo (speaker), Lucia
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

In every religion, you find the same extremists.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), The Mother Superior
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
The Pill Quotes

That night, I really understood the meaning of “the sexual revolution.” It was my first big step toward assimilating into Western culture.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Julie
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:
The Vegetable Quotes

“Whatever! Existence is not absurd. There are people who believe in it and who give their lives for values like liberty.”

“What rubbish! Even that, it’s a distraction from boredom.”

“So my uncle died to distract himself?”

For Momo, death was the only domain where my knowledge exceeded his. On this subject, I always had the last word.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Momo (speaker)
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

The harder I tried to assimilate, the more I had the feeling that I was distancing myself from my culture, betraying my parents and my origins, that I was playing a game by somebody else’s rules. Each telephone call from my parents reminded me of my cowardice and my betrayal. I was at once happy to hear their voices and ashamed to talk to them.

[...]

If only they knew...if they knew that their daughter was made up like a punk, that she smoked joints to make a good impression, that she had seen men in their underwear while they were being bombed every day, they wouldn’t call me their dream child.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad, Marjane’s Mother/Mom, Julie, Momo
Related Symbols: Makeup and the Veil
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
The Horse Quotes

“It’s amazing how you’ve grown.”

I didn’t repeat that she, too, had changed. At her age, you don’t grow up, you grow old.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Mother/Mom (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad
Page Number: 47
Explanation and Analysis:

In the letter, he was overjoyed by the thought that I had a peaceful life in Vienna. I had the impression that he didn’t realize what I was enduring.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
Hide and Seek Quotes

I’d already heard this threatening word yelled at me in the metro. It was an old man who said “dirty foreigner, get out!” I had heard it another time on the street. But I tried to make light of it. I thought that it was just the reaction of a nasty old man.

But this, this was different. It was neither an old man destroyed by the war, nor a young idiot. It was my boyfriend’s mother who attacked me. She was saying that I was taking advantage of Markus and his situation to obtain an Austrian passport, that I was a witch.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Markus
Page Number: 66
Explanation and Analysis:
The Croissant Quotes

What do you want me to say, sir? That I’m the vegetable that I refused to become?

That I’m so disappointed in myself that I can no longer look at myself in the mirror? That I hate myself?

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
The Veil Quotes

I had known a revolution that had made me lose part of my family.

I had survived a war that had distanced me from my country and my parents...

...And it’s a banal story of love that almost carried me away.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Markus
Page Number: 87
Explanation and Analysis:

Despite the doctor’s orders, I bought myself several cartons of cigarettes.

[...]

I think that I preferred to put myself in serious danger rather than confront my shame. My shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made my parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for me. The shame of having become a mediocre nihilist.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad, Marjane’s Mother/Mom
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
The Return Quotes

There were people everywhere. Each passenger was being met by a dozen people. Suddenly, amongst the crowd, I spotted my parents...

...But it wasn’t reciprocal. Of course it made sense. One changes more between the ages of fourteen and eighteen than between thirty and forty.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad, Marjane’s Mother/Mom
Page Number: 92
Explanation and Analysis:

“Ah, there’s nothing like Iranian tea!”

“Oh yes, especially with a cigarette. Do you want one?”

“Mom!!”

“What? You know the proverb: ‘prosperity consists of two things: tea after a meal, and a cigarette after tea.’”

It was the first time that my mother had spoken to me in this tone: in her eyes now, I had become an adult.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Mother/Mom (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad
Page Number: 95
Explanation and Analysis:

Many had changed names. They were now called Martyr what’s-his-name Avenue or Martyr something-or-other Street.

It was very unsettling.

I felt as though I were walking through a cemetery.

...Surrounded by the victims of a war I had fled.

It was unbearable. I hurried home.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:

Next to my father’s distressing report, my Viennese misadventures seemed like little anecdotes of no importance. So I decided that I would never tell them anything about my Austrian life. They had suffered enough as it was.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad, Marjane’s Mother/Mom
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:
Skiing Quotes

Certainly, they’d had to endure the war, but they had each other and close by. They had never known the confusion of being a third-worlder, they had always had a home! At the same time, how could they have pitied me? I was so shut off. I kept repeating to myself that I mustn’t crack up.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Father/Dad, Marjane’s Mother/Mom, Marjane’s Grandmother
Page Number: 113
Explanation and Analysis:

“What do you mean? You’ve done the deed with many people?”

“Well, I mean...I’ve had a few experiences.”

“So what’s the difference between you and a whore???”

Underneath their outward appearance of being modern women, my friends were real traditionalists.

They were overrun by hormones and frustration, which explained their aggressiveness toward me. To them, I had become a decadent Western woman.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:

But as soon as the effect of the pills wore off, I once again became conscious. My calamity could be summarized in one sentence: I was nothing. I was a Westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn’t even know anymore why I was living.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Page Number: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
The Exam Quotes

He sought in me a lost lightheartedness. And I sought in him a war which I had escaped. In short, we complemented each other.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Reza
Page Number: 125
Explanation and Analysis:
The Convocation Quotes

I applied myself. Designing the “model” that would please both the administration and the interested parties wasn’t easy. I made dozens of sketches.

This was the result of my research. Though subtle, these differences meant a lot to us.

This little rebellion reconciled my grandmother and me. [...] And this is how I recovered my self-esteem and my dignity. For the first time in a long time, I was happy with myself.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Marjane’s Grandmother
Related Symbols: Makeup and the Veil
Page Number: 144
Explanation and Analysis:
The Socks Quotes

The regime had understood that one person leaving herself while asking herself: Are my trousers long enough? Is my veil in place? Can my makeup be seen? Are they going to whip me?

No longer asks herself: Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What’s going on in the political prisons?

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Related Symbols: Makeup and the Veil
Page Number: 148
Explanation and Analysis:

I didn’t say everything I could have: that she was frustrated because she was still a virgin at twenty-seven! That she was forbidding me what was forbidden to her! That to marry someone that you don’t know, for his money, is prostitution. That despite her locks of hair and her lipstick, she was acting like the state.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker)
Related Symbols: Makeup and the Veil
Page Number: 149
Explanation and Analysis:
The Wedding Quotes

When the apartment door closed, I had a bizarre feeling. I was already sorry! I had suddenly become “a married woman.” I had conformed to society, while I had always wanted to remain in the margins. In my mind, “a married woman” wasn’t like me. It required too many compromises. I couldn’t accept it, but it was too late.

Related Characters: Marjane Satrapi (speaker), Reza, Marjane’s Father/Dad
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis: