42 pages • 1 hour read
Marjane Satrapi, Transl. Anjali SinghPersepolis 2: The Story of a Return
Nonfiction | Graphic Memoir | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “Skiing”
For the second time, Marjane speaks directly to the reader. The artwork depicts Marjane, wide-eyed, looking directly at the reader. She admits that she is depressed and unable to find a way out of her depression. She craves comfort and recognition for the suffering she endured in exile, yet she feels unable to communicate her needs because she understands that those in Iran have suffered far greater pains. She asserts that European culture is uncaring.
A retreat to the ski slopes allows her to connect with old friends, but when she admits to having premarital sex, her friends are unable to reconcile their traditional views with Marjane’s choices, and they rebuke her. She returns home more depressed than ever. After seeing several therapists, she is given an antidepressant that puts her in a state of trance. She says, “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” (118).
She decides to kill herself, and after several attempts, first by slitting her wrist and then by overdosing, she awakes in a hallucination and seeks out her doctor. The doctor tells her she should have died and that God intervened. This awakens a new resolve in her, and she begins reclaiming her life by taking her grandmother’s advice to build a healthy body, allowing a healthy mind to follow. She gets a perm, wears makeup, and exercises, and she becomes an aerobics instructor in Tehran.
Chapter 13 Summary: “The Exam”
Marjane meets a man at a party and they quickly hit it off. Reza is a war veteran and she is a woman with a Western education. He wants to escape Iran, just as she wants to find her roots. They are opposites in many ways, all of which bring them closer together. He invites Marjane to leave Iran with him, but getting a visa will take time. They decide to study for the university exam while they wait. After months of studying, they both pass and then Marjane must take the ideological exam, which she passes by admitting that she does not know how to pray. Surprising herself and everyone, she is admitted to study graphic art just as Reza is admitted as well. She feels that her life is coming together.
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Makeup”
Reza would like to see Marjane in more makeup. To surprise him one day, she puts on bright lipstick and waits for him at the market. Guardians of the Revolution arrive to raid the market and will surely arrest her. To save herself, she accuses a nearby stranger of speaking indecently to her, and he is arrested. When she tells Reza what she did, he laughs and calls her a survivor. The man is shoved in the back of a van and disappears. Reza and Marjane walk around for a while then go home. When Marjane returns to her house, her grandmother does not find the situation funny at all and calls Marjane selfish and lacking in morals. She reminds Marjane who her grandfather and uncle were and how they suffered for their integrity. When she leaves, Marjane thinks about what she has done.
Chapters 12-14 Analysis
Marjane’s return to Iran is not smooth. She struggles to find her footing, her place in society, and her moral compass. Initially she is depressed about what she experienced in Austria but soon her depression translates to her situation in Iran, where she feels misunderstood and isolated. These chapters explore displacement in foreign cultures and one’s inability to ever return home unchanged. She is Iranian in the West and Western in Iran. She can never be fully accepted anywhere. Satrapi hence intensifies the sense of An Identity in Conflict Between Two Worlds as the novel explores Marjane’s isolation in a second culture.
Marjane undergoes significant character development in this section as her sense of morality is tested. She becomes, again, the slightly rebellious girl she once was in grade school. Through these acts of rebellion, Marjane inadvertently hurts others, without remorse for these consequences. There is no follow-up in the novel about the man she has arrested, mimicking her mindset when she decides to betray him to save herself. Satrapi suggests that Marjane struggles with her sense of morality in the face of Authority’s Use of Religion to Control Populations. While the morality police attempt to dictate her behavior and that of those around her, she is unable to develop morality on her own. This suggests that those who use religion to control populations are not truly helping the spiritual development of that population but rather repressing them.
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