Persepolis and The Bluest Eye Comparing Key Quotes/Themes

'Pecola's voice was no more than a sigh.'

'...the only sound she made - a hollow suck of air in the back of her throat. Like the rapid loss of air from a circus balloon.'

Technique:

- Motif of silence

- Simile (comparing her to a deflating circus balloon, something that has lost all potential joy and is now shrivelled and collasped, losing all form - not dissimilar to how she collasped after the rape and how it impacted her mentally afterwards)

'she could never get her eyes to disappear. [...] They were everything.'

Technique:

- Motif of the eyes (Pecola's obession, they never dissapear because she is obsessed with them)

- 'they were everything' again, her obsession

'How do you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you?'

Technique:

- Symbolises her lack of familial love and alienation

- She never gets a proper answer to the question

''To eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. be Mary Jane"

Technique:

- Repetition of 'mary jane' symbolises her obsession with become more white

- 'to eat the candy is to eat the eyes' again highlighting her obsession with having blue eyes

'Adults do not talk to us-they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information'

'We didn't initiate talk with grownups; we answered their questions'

'Frieda and I were not introduced to him-merely pointed out. Like, here is the bathroom; the clothes closet is here; and these are my kids"

Theme/techniques:

- Powerlessness of children

- Use of collective pronouns 'us' and 'we' indicate that this is a common/ubiquitous experience, atleast within their community

- Rule of three/listing, they are the last in the list, indicating their lack of importance in reference to the wants/needs of adults

'Everybody's jealous. Every time I look at somebody, they look off'

Techniques/theme:

- Alienation/isolation

- failure of community

- Pecola's madness, thinking people are jealous of her blue eyes, when in reality people avoid her out of guilt/pity/fear or lack of understanding/caring

"Iran was the epitome of evil and to be iranian was a heavy burden to bear. It was easier to lie than to assume that burden"

techniques/theme:

- Prejudice/alienation

- denying fundamental aspects of yourself

- voiceover (reflecting on the past - and the present with the islamaphobia after 9/11)

panel:

- Marji looking straight at the reader, character gaze, and away from the person she's talking to - Satrapi converying her point directly to the audiance

- her silence/looking away choosing to remain silent/lie in an attempt to fit in

'blah blah blah'

techniques:

- onomatopoeia of someone talking in a repetitive/boring/droning manner

- indicating how the people around her arent listening/dont care

Themes of identity

Persepolis:

- Struggles to find her true identity

- Her identity is linked to the theme of 'change'

- She feels like she does not fit in anywhere.

- Denys parts of her identity - due to prejudice against Iranians - lies about her nationality

- By the end of the book finally finds her identity as she leaves Iran

Bluest Eye:

- Alienated from black and white communities

- Denys parts of her identity - internalised racism - wants to become more 'white' and is obsessed with having blue eyes

- By the end of the book has lost her identity as she has gone crazy

Themes of change

Persepolis:

- Growing up/puberty and trying to fit in

- symbolism of the cigarette and the mirror

- big changes, leaving Iran and returning and leaving again

Bluest Eye:

- Growing up/puberty

- Pecola starting her period

- What the children do and don't know about how the body works

- Everyone else around her moves on with their lives, they all change but Pecola remains the same, stuck in time after going crazy from her obsession and her trauma

BIG COMPARISON:

- Marji changes a lot over the book, as reflected by the motif of the mirror

- Pecola is fixed on the same thing, the motif of the blue eyes, and ends up staying the same whilst everyone else grows up at changes, shes stuck at 11, because of the phycological damage and trauma she experienced

Theme of gender

Persepolis:

- Oppression that women faced under the regime

- Forced to wear veils and cover up

Bluest Eye:

- Women's forced reliance on men (Pauline and Cholly)

- The novel's black women only experience freedom from male oppression once they are no longer desired as sexual objects, realising this only after they are elderly.

- Lack of female power

Themes of power/powerlessness

Persepolis:

- Power of the gov/regime over the citizens of Iran

- Attempting to regain power though acts of rebellion (protests, partyings, cigarettes, clothing etc)

- It is the power and oppression of the Iranian state which forces Marjane to leave.

Bluest Eye:

- Working for a white family gives Pauline a false sense of power

- Cholly reacts to his powerlessness with violence

- The powerlessness of children

Comparison:

- In persepolis they rebel through protests and their actions and clothing

- IN the bluest eye claudia protests by tearing up the white doll, refusing to except the concept of white as 'beautiful' to be forced onto her

Loss of innocence

Persepolis:

- Growing up during the Iranian revolution

- Omnipresence and desensitisation of violence

Bluest Eye:

- Domestic violence

- Sexual assault

Comparison:

- Both show the impacts that the loss of innocence had on them

- In Persepolis there is a sense of community, Marji shares those experiences with others in iran

- However, in the Bluest eye, Pecola had been failed by her community, alienated by them

"If she looked different that is to say, beautiful"

techniques/themes:

- internalised prejudice seeing herself as ugly and feeling the need to change herlsef because of her race

- systematic racism, seeing 'whiteness' as 'beautiful'

Persepolis:

-

Bluest Eye:

-