DewaltLens5

Kyle Dewalt YA Lit Dr. Sherry March 29, 2011 Reader-as-Writer Now that I have finished reading //Persepolis// by Marjane Satrapi, I am not quite sure how I feel. One of the main reasons for this is because it was the first ever graphic novel that I have ever read. While, the storyline was interesting and kept my attention, I just missed reading a typical novel that was written out. Overall though, I felt that it was a very good text. I do not feel that I would teach this graphic novel to my students, but I feel that it does have value and conveys emotions and a lesson in a way that a typical text could not.

When you consider what this graphic novel teaches someone collectively, it is that you do not have to be a typical adolescent teen boy to read a comic such as //Persepolis//. It was in fact written by an adult female, so this is a good text in the fact that it opens up a positive model for female students to take notice to and possible encourages them to go and write their own graphic novel such as what Satrapi had done. Another thing that this graphic novel does as a teaching aspect, is that you can take notice to how much more organized this work is compared to many others. When you look through the pages of this book, it is noticeable that there are no significant changes amongst the characters between the pages. You can tell that the character grows up throughout the pages, but it all connects and transitions smoothly. The main differences are also mapped out on page 189 with it going in a row all of the changes that she goes through such as her eye and chin developing and having a change in identity. The change in identity on page 190 is something however, that our students may parallel themselves to and from reading this book, will find courage to become the person that they wish to be.

One thing that I would challenge Satrapi on for her to change if she ever edits the book and creates a new edition, is that I feel that she should make the fonts bigger and more spaced out. Our students are going to possibly run in to the issue of trying to read the novel and possibly have to look closer at some of the words or letters. If I had a student with a visual disability, //Persepolis// would not be a graphic novel to have them read because it is just not large enough for even our own sight. Yet, to include those students, the book was fortunately transformed into a motion picture and could serve as their means of reading.

The downfall of a graphic novel is that it is already drawn out for you and it ends all interpretations and images that one may have in their head from reading. You cannot create on your own what a character looks like or how they are doing something because Marjane Satrapi has the illustrations provided for us, which are her own interpretations. This draws from our students creativity in a way because they may want to keep their own perspectives rather than have them supplied. A good scene though that is drawn out for us is on page 13. Many people would not understand the image of God and Karl Marx appearing to look the same unless if they had the images supplied for them or they researched this. This made the story comical though overall, because not many authors would compare the two.

To conclude, while I do not believe that I would teach this text in my own classroom, I would most definitely recommend it to my students who have an interest in graphic novels and would encourage my female students to follow in Satrapi’s footsteps and take a dab in a male dominated area of literature. This text could also be recommended to a history class because of how well it depicts the war and a family’s experience trying to survive with all of the difficulties such as a forced veil or not being allowed to party. Including certain aspects of the graphic novel would however be a great tool to include to show outside sources if I would teach a different graphic novel.

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