From Young to Bold: Youthful Resistance in Persepolis and at Present

I have a confession to make: I had my first legal drink before I read my first graphic novel. Luckily, I’ve since amended this, casting aside my graphic novel virginity with Marjane Satrapi’s memoir, Persepolis. With my “new year, new me” mentality and a renewed commitment to read my physical TBR before spending more money on books, I (literally) dusted off the copy of Satrapi’s work sitting on my bookshelf and dove in.

Satrapi quickly immersed me in the world of her childhood. Born to an affluent family in Iran in 1969, Marjane, affectionately nicknamed “Marji,” was only ten years old at the time of the Iranian Revolution. Narrated through her child eyes and illustrated solely in black-and-white comic strips, the magic of Persepolis is in the simplicity of its form and language. Satrapi juxtaposes this simplicity with the complexit

y of Iran’s socio-political environment, melding political commentary with a coming-of-age story. While nearly half a century has passed since the start of the Iranian Revolution and two decades since Satrapi published Persepolis, the lessons—both from the revolution and from Satrapi—remain more salient now than perhaps ever.

Marji and her family’s relationship to politics has always been tumultuous. Her familial ancestry traces back to the former Emperor of Iran, who imperial powers cast out and replaced with the Shah after WWII (to advance Western oil interests, of course). As discontent with the Shah’s demagogical hold on the country grows, Marji’s parents join in protest with thousands of Iranians eager for revolution. They seek not to reinstall the emperor or found a republic but instead fight for communism. The political philosophy captures Marji’s young mind, too, as she fixates on a comic book starring Karl Marx and dialectical materialism. With this detail, Satrapi proves the medium’s ability to articulate dense and heavy subject matter. In doing so, she legitimizes her decision to author her story and, with it, the story of the Iranian Revolution, in the very same format.  

In Persepolis, Satrapi highlights that a nation’s ripeness for revolution is impossible to disguise, even from the eyes of a child. This is affirmed not only through young Marji’s keen political awareness and taste for Marxism but by the startling impact the revolution, and its fallout, has on her daily life. While the Iranian people succeed in forcing the Shah out and massive celebrations erupt, the Shah’s absence reveals fractures within the movement, separating revolutionaries into two camps. The Islamic fundamentalists usurp control of the government, and the communists, including Marji’s parents, become political scapegoats.

Marji’s childhood crumbles before her. The bilingual French school she adores closes after the fundamentalists declare bilingual education too “Western” and, thus, illegal. They ban co-ed schools, cloistering Marji from her male friends. Even with this gendered separation, Marji, alongside Iranian women of all ages, is forced to wear the veil, as her hair is deemed too tempting for the male gaze. Marji feels conflicted, trapped between her faith and modernity—two key aspects of her identity. Sitting in her female-only classroom and wearing the veil, Marji rips out images of the Shah from the front of her textbook as her teacher recants her statement about the Shah’s divine right to rule. This unpredicted aftermath of the revolution calls into question all Marji was taught to believe—about her country, her religion, and, above all, herself. 

The country’s political revolution, then, sparks a personal revolution for Marji, demanding her to renegotiate her national identity. “Being Iranian” transforms from a passive recognition of Marji’s birthplace to an active assertion of her political and cultural values. Marji, like her parents, refuses to sit idly by and begs to attend protests. While Marji’s parents insist that it is far too dangerous for her to join in, Satrapi emphasizes that children, even if sidelined from protesting, still must confront and live the dangers of a totalitarian regime. No one—not even, and perhaps especially, a child—is safe from tyranny.

Satrapi approaches this reality with pragmatic hope, rather than with resignation, and issues a clarion call: let the children participate. Refusing children this right may keep them safe in the present but will certainly, and irrevocably, imperil their futures. This tension regarding children’s place in a revolution permeates our present political moment. In the United States, citizens, both young and old, find themselves renegotiating what it means to “be American,” just as Marji did with “being Iranian.” Similar to the Iranians who opposed fundamentalist Islamic rule, many Americans are now discovering that a government does not necessarily equate to a people. In fact, at times, fighting against a nation’s government may be the ultimate expression of love for its people. Satrapi, in Persepolis, reminds us that if a nation loves its children and the children love their nation, there is no better moment for them to express it than when the government sets the nation ablaze. Children can face the smoke and, when necessary, tolerate some burns, if it means they can avoid complete incineration.

Marji embodies this in Persepolis, and American children are following suit at present. Marji’s insistence on voicing her discontent evokes images of children holding signs with pointed remarks like “Can’t believe I’ve been dealing with this $hit my whole life” and blowing bubbles at NO KINGS! protests across the United States, disavowing the tyrannical presidency of Donald Trump. Nelson Mandela, over thirty years ago, reminded us that “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” While Mandela’s words ring true, children are not merely objects of the nation but are subjects of it, too. From Marji’s revolutionary dissent in 1980s Iran to the defiance of American children today, we are reminded that children do not wait passively in the face of injustice. Instead, they fight tooth and nail for their society’s soul. 

As Persepolis progresses and Marji grows from child to teenager, her interest in politics becomes tinged with the spirit of adolescent rebellion. Marji wants to be free from the imposition of the Islamic regime as much as she wants to be free from the imposition of her parents’ rules. For example, she lies to her mother after nearly being arrested by members of the Women’s Branch of the Guardians of the Revolution, a morality police force, for wearing “Western” sneakers and a jean jacket. Though shaking, crying, and fearing for her life, Marji returns home and acts as if nothing happened. Despite the danger she knows the women pose to her, she values her newfound adolescence and thus chooses to protect her right to traverse Tehran solo rather than take extra precautions.

Readers of Persepolis may want to dismiss Marji’s preference for her freedom over her safety as ignorant. I, though, offer an alternative. Yes, Marji is, at times, careless. However, it is this reckless abandon, fueled by her teenage whims, that enables Marji to resist the regime. Rather than submitting to the dictates of the Guardians of the Revolution and becoming downtrodden or riddled with hopelessness, Marji’s desire for independence enables her to test just how far the regime is willing to go to impose their will. Marji exemplifies that the adolescent mind is powerful precisely because of its intoxication with its own exceptionalism. An adolescent like Marji believes herself invincible, needing no protection from the rules; because she is young and her life full of possibilities, reshaping her future takes precedence. Consequently, she acts as if the rules do not apply to her. If we often say that joy is resistance, what is more joyful than youthful rebellion? Perhaps the spirit of youthful rebellion, then, is the key to (political) resistance.

Persepolis would be a necessary read in ordinary times but is a mandatory read amidst the political turmoil of the present. Discontent looms large across the globe, including in Satrapi’s birthplace. In the early days of 2026, protests over economic troubles in Iran devolved into a movement challenging its authoritarian leadership, much like the protests that fueled the 1979 Revolution in Satrapi’s graphic novel. Unfortunately, the resistance was quickly met with violence, resulting in thousands of deaths. Protests are similarly being met with violence in the United States. As vicious immigration forces kidnap and disappear people across the country and assassinate protestors in the street, it is clear that, whether we protest or remain complicit, no one is safe. Children, unfortunately, are no exception, as proved (using examples only from recent days) by ICE agents raiding a high school in Minneapolis, gassing the car of Shawn and Destiny Jackson as they transported their six children, and detaining five year old Liam Adrian Conejo Ramos. There is no identifying factor that offers sufficient protection, and, even if there were, age would not be on the list. With young faces leading the movements from Iran to the United States, it seems that youth are protesting both despite their age and precisely because of it.

In Persepolis, Satrapi reminds us of the millions of young people not only watching the chaos unfolding but fighting for their future. Youth no longer means innocence. In such trying times, it demands the opposite: involvement. Right now, we must fight not only for the youth but alongside the youth. More than that, though, Persepolis begs us to fight like the youth—with zeal and rebelliousness, screaming petty insults as we protest and catapulting signs with irreverent slogans high into the sky.

Marji, despite the corruption of her country and her innocence, refuses to allow her spirit to be corrupted. Instead, the turmoil fuels her rebelliousness. Thus, in this moment of upheaval—in Iran, in the United States, and across the globe—Satrapi’s Persepolis offers a glimmer of hope: to resist is to survive, and to survive is to resist.

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Grace Guernsey is a junior in the SFS studying Culture & Politics with a minor in Spanish. Follow her on Goodreads @gguernz.