Hello once again,
I have been thinking about the relation between Marx and God in Persepolis. I think that young Marjane experiences a conflict between her faith in her religion and her desire to follow a social philosophy that purported to champion equality.When Marjane was very young, she primarily believed in her religion.
Satrapi represents the conflict she experienced through the use of a few short scenes that capture the childlike need to find the truth. Where an adult might allow contradictory ideas to coexist in his consciousness, inventing rationalizations for each, children are too simple and innocent to accept blatant contradictions. For example, Marjane wanted to believe in the Marxism that her parents promoted, but it bothered her deeply that her father drove a Cadillac and they had a maid who was not invited to join the family at meals. The scenes that illustrate her internal struggle involve the characters of “Marx” and “God”. These characters are like the imaginary friends that a child might have. They come and go, offering comfort and communion until there is something wrong with the imaginary world she has created. Once she adopts some of the ideas of Marxism and wants to emulate Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, God does not appear.
I haven't read Persepolis so I am just responding to your thoughts on the piece. It is interesting that you see the search for truth as the occupation of the child because the child is "simple" and innocent".That suggests that growing up means the loss of simplicity and innocence, setting aside the search for the truth, and the acceptance of the contradictions or hypocrisy that characterizes belief systems like Christianity and Marxism. In my own youth I concluded that the only way one could be a true Christian was to renounce or deny the world and submit oneself to an other-worldly power or God. It has to be all or nothing because half measures are inherently hypocritical.
ReplyDeleteIf we are endowed with a will to search for the truth and even as children we are driven to do so, why should we accept any system of belief that ends the quest, denies our sense of right and wrong, good and evil,and denies the possibility of living in the real world as free, honest, and true? Isn't that where the simple innocence of childhood naturally leads?