Iranian-born Marjane believes that “I would always be an Iranian in the West, and a Westerner in Iran.” This encapsulates one of the memoir’s central conflicts: as Marjane moves back and forth between Iran (her home country) and Austria (where she goes to school), she must constantly adjust her understanding of social norms—often with only limited success. As Marjane comes of age and attempts to figure out who she is, she must also figure out whether she feels more comfortable in Europe or in Iran. The memoir makes the case that to some degree, this is a black and white decision—a person must decide where to live, after all—but it’s also possible to bridge the gaps between cultures and form a multicultural identity.
No matter where in the world Marjane is, she consistently finds that her friends—if not she herself—view her identity as oppositional to the dominant culture. For instance, in Vienna, Marjane is shocked by her friends’ sexual activity and their openness about it—in Iran, people who have premarital sex go to great lengths to hide it. Thus, although Marjane came from Iran believing that she was liberal in her thinking about gender relations and sex, her friends find her embarrassingly innocent and conservative. Marjane ends up having several sexual experiences of her own while in Vienna—though when she returns to Iran years later, she doesn’t necessarily think of herself as being as promiscuous as many of her European friends. But even to her sexually curious friends in Tehran, Marjane finds that she’s an outsider—they ask, for instance, whether Marjane is any better than a sex worker given that she’s had sex with more than one man. This issue with sex is only one area in which Marjane finds herself on the outs, both in Vienna and in Tehran. This sends the message that no matter where Marjane goes, she can’t win: she’ll always be too liberal or too conservative in at least one regard.
Marjane also discovers that no matter where a young person lives, the desire to fit in is often overwhelming. But to someone from a different culture, those attempts can look wildly misguided. In Vienna, this desire to fit in leads Marjane to study political theory and philosophy, to experiment with drugs, and to alter her appearance so as to stand out less. Marjane immerses herself in the works of Sartre, cuts her hair and begins wearing heavy eyeliner, and even becomes her school’s resident drug supplier. Nevertheless, she recognizes that her intellectual and physical experiments don’t always help her be the person she wants to be. Indeed, Marjane takes issue in particular with her own heavy drug use. Using drugs and procuring them for her friends might make Marjane popular, but her parents’ warning that drugs turn people into vegetables rings in Marjane’s head. She feels ashamed about using drugs, though she simultaneously relies on them more and more to escape this shame. In this sense, then, Marjane’s attempt to fit in turns her into someone she knows she doesn’t like and who she knows her parents wouldn’t appreciate either—and Marjane still deeply craves her parents’ approval. She thus realizes the importance of bridging the part of her that wants to fit in with the part of her that wants to remain true to who she is: a proud Iranian Muslim woman and a believer in women’s independence.
Once Marjane moves back home, she learns how a person can combine different aspects of their identity into a cohesive whole: they should simply discover and pursue what makes them happy. Marjane does this by pursuing her degree in art from the local university and by marrying a fellow student named Reza. But while her art gives her the opportunity to express herself and be happy, Marjane also realizes this pursuit isn’t something she can successfully pursue in Iran. This becomes abundantly clear when Marjane and Reza’s joint final thesis (plans and designs for a theme park using Iranian mythology as inspiration) receives high marks but is turned down by the local government. The government official points out to Marjane that while their designs are beautiful and well-researched, they have no place in Iran’s fundamentalist culture. For instance, he notes that it’s impossible (and illegal) in this culture to portray a woman without a veil riding a mythical creature as Marjane and Reza did in their designs. The kind of art Marjane wants to make (including this graphic novel and its predecessor, Persepolis) can only find an audience outside of Iran. This ultimately leads to Marjane divorcing Reza and once again moving to Europe. But this doesn’t mean that Marjane leaves behind her identity as a proud Iranian woman simply because she chooses to leave—rather, Persepolis and Persepolis 2 symbolize a merging of cultures within Marjane’s identity. The books allow Marjane to express her love for and her frustrations with her home country, and to introduce its intricacies to others.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Identity, Culture, and Self-Expression ThemeTracker
Identity, Culture, and Self-Expression Quotes in Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
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!”
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.
In every religion, you find the same extremists.
That night, I really understood the meaning of “the sexual revolution.” It was my first big step toward assimilating into Western culture.
“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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
He sought in me a lost lightheartedness. And I sought in him a war which I had escaped. In short, we complemented each other.
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.
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.
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.
