Space: influencing character? (Persepolis)

Space is everywhere. I’m not talking about the outer space, where the nebulas, and different planets are (although, that is a space). But space: where one goes to relax, to read, heck even personal space is space. Space doesn’t necessarily means a room with four walls; it could be outside in a park, beach, and mountains. Space does determine who we are, too; or it shapes us, it can mold our characters.

In Persepolis, we see the different spaces that Marjane finds herself in. These spaces transform, and shape Marjane, whether or not she sees it. For Example, in the beginning of the book, when Marjane is explaining her childhood, she was a very imaginative child. She talked to God; she thought that she was going to be a prophet. Even though her parents weren’t so religious, but she read books about religion.  Also, as the Islamic revolution starts, and Marjane starts finding out about heroes she wants to learn more about them and she is more interested in different governments, this is where a seed is planted, where she starts getting more interested in politics which later on shape her more. As she grows older, Marjane gets more politically involved because she knows more and she is more aware of her surroundings, she starts rebelling and questions her teachers to a point where she almost gets expelled. In the book, her parents decide it’s best that they send her to Austria. Here, is also another space where Marjane inherits a different persona. The people she met change her, and she starts smoking weed and even sells it, and starts dating. When she goes back to Iran, she enrolls into an art school with her then husband. Because she wanted freedom, she got married, thinking that she loved him, but the marriage didn’t last. During the “space of marriage” I guess you can say, she wasn’t the same Marjane. Although her husband wasn’t those, “macho” men, Marjane would still just lounge around her parents’ house, and dind’t talk to her parents—to a point that her father had told her that she was just being lazy and wasn’t doing much with her life. All of these influenced her a great deal, it in a way shaped who she was whether it was permanent or temporary, but these spaces influenced her a lot.

       The Gender roles changes in Iran and in the west; in Iran, the women (after the revolution) women where required to hear the veil and the long skirts, barely showing any skin. Whilst in the West, it’s not strict as far as dress code goes.  But it seems that women in Iran were more oppressed, and they didn’t have the chance to do much. A great example is for marriage. Women couldn’t divorce, without the husbands consent. While in the west, well, a woman can get divorced on her own account and doesn’t have to ask for her husbands permission. It exemplifies part of the gender role. Women aren’t allowed to do much in Iran. While in the west, there are different gender roles, but it doesn’t oppress women’s right.