A girl grows up in Tehran and draws her country in black ink. How does a comic tell a story that words alone cannot?
The whole series · A Child's Eye on History →
Ten items. Say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Read the sentence, guess the meaning of the word in bold, then reveal.
Same method: guess from the sentence, then reveal.
Three words you will need to explain what a page does. Guess, then reveal.
Read each part. After it, answer the quick check from memory, then discuss one question.
Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969 and grew up in Tehran, the capital of Iran. As a young adult she left the country, and she later lived in Paris. Between 2000 and 2003 she published her life story in French as a comic, in four volumes, under the title Persepolis — the Greek name for the ancient Persian capital.
It is a memoir: a true account of her own childhood and youth. It begins when she is a child of about ten, in the years when Iran's government fell and a new, much stricter one took its place, and it follows her through war, through teenage years abroad in Europe and back to Tehran.
English readers met it a few years later, and it became one of the best-known graphic memoirs in the world. In 2007 Satrapi and a co-director turned it into an animated film, which shared a Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
1. In which language did Persepolis first appear, and over what years?
2. What does it mean to call the book a memoir?
3. What happened to it in 2007?
1. In French, in four volumes, between 2000 and 2003.
2. It is a true account of the author's own life, told by herself.
3. It was made into an animated film, which shared a Jury Prize at Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar.
A comic page is built from panels: small boxes, each showing one moment. Words appear in two main ways — in captions, which usually carry the narrator's voice, and in speech bubbles, which carry what characters say. The picture and the words never do exactly the same job.
Between the panels is the gutter, the white space where nothing is drawn. The comics scholar Scott McCloud argued in his book Understanding Comics that readers fill this gap themselves: we see a person raise a fist in one panel and a broken window in the next, and our mind joins them into an event that is not drawn. McCloud called this closure.
So a comic asks more of its reader than it seems to. Part of the story is on the page, and part is made in the reader's head. The author controls what to show, what to hide and how long we spend looking.
1. What are the two main ways words appear in a comic?
2. What is the gutter?
3. What does the reader do in the gap between panels?
1. In captions (the narrator's voice) and in speech bubbles (what characters say).
2. The blank space between panels.
3. The reader supplies what is missing and joins two moments into one event.
Satrapi's drawings are stark. They use only black ink on white paper, with bold shapes and simple, stylised faces. There are no shadows, no grey and almost no background detail. A page can look childlike at first, as if a child had drawn it.
That simplicity does real work. Critics have suggested that a plain style lets readers in different countries see themselves in the characters rather than treating them as exotic strangers. It also creates a strong juxtaposition: a child's simple drawing style set against the very adult events of revolution, war and loss.
Imagine a panel, drawn in this style, where a small figure sits calmly at a table while the caption describes something frightening in an even tone. The calm voice and the frightening fact pull against each other, and the reader feels the tension without being told to. That is how a stark style can convey more than a detailed one.
1. Describe Satrapi's drawing style in two or three words.
2. Why do critics think the simple style helps readers?
3. What does the imagined panel show about how words and image can interact?
1. Stark, black and white, simple and stylised.
2. It lets readers from different places see themselves in the characters instead of seeing exotic strangers.
3. A calm picture or tone set against a frightening caption creates tension that the reader feels for themselves.
Reading a comic well means reading three layers at once — then saying what they do together. The Panel Cycle gives you four steps that work on any page, from any comic, film still or painting.
These are observations about an imagined page. Which step of the cycle is each one?
1. Words — it reports what is written, in the narrator's own phrase.
2. Image — it describes what is drawn, as a camera would.
3. Gap — it is something we infer, not written and not drawn.
4. Effect — it states what the combination does to the reader.
5. Image — size and position are visual facts.
6. Words — it is about what is written — and what the written text omits.
7. Gap — the connection happens in the space between panels.
8. Effect — it names the overall impression the page creates.
It can become a checklist. Four steps are a way in, not a formula. The best analysis shows how the steps work together; do not list them one by one.
Not every page has a gap. Sometimes the words and the picture simply agree. Then say so, and ask why the author wanted agreement here.
Effect is a claim, not a fact. Two readers can feel different things. Support your effect with the exact word or detail that caused it.
When you write about a book, a comic or a film, you describe it in the present tense — even if the events in the story happened long ago. The history around the text, and the author's life, go in the past.
Write the verb in brackets in the correct form. Decide: is it the text, the author's choice, or history?
1. On the first page, the narrator (wear) a veil to school.
2. The author (publish) the first volume in 2000.
3. The caption (contrast) with the image beside it.
4. In 1979 the government of the country (fall).
5. Through the empty gutter, the reader (join) two moments into one event.
1. wears (the text, present)
2. published (history of the book, past)
3. contrasts (the text, present)
4. fell (history, past)
5. joins (how the text works, present)
Each sentence has one tense mistake for writing about a text. Rewrite the sentence.
1. The narrator described her school and then she showed us the classroom.
2. Satrapi uses black ink and she publishes the book in French in 2000.
3. At the end of the first volume, the child was sent abroad.
4. The image shows a girl who stood alone in the playground.
5. The caption is calm and the picture was tense.
1. The narrator describes her school and then shows us the classroom.
2. Satrapi uses black ink and published the book in French in 2000.
3. At the end of the first volume, the child is sent abroad.
4. The image shows a girl who stands alone in the playground.
5. The caption is calm and the picture is tense.
Rewrite each plot summary in the correct tense for writing about a text.
1. The girl looked at the soldiers and she felt afraid. →
2. The artist chose black ink, and the pages looked stark. →
3. Two panels showed a fist and a window; the reader imagined the rest. →
1. The girl looks at the soldiers and feels afraid.
2. The artist chooses black ink, and the pages look stark.
3. Two panels show a fist and a window; the reader imagines the rest.
Now say three sentences about a film or a book you know, using the present tense for the story and the past for its history.
Now use the cycle and the present tense on your own material. Choose a task, start the timer, and talk.
Describe an image, photograph or drawing that told you more than words could. What did it show, and what did you have to imagine?
Choose a still from any film, comic or advert you know. Take us through Words, Image, Gap and Effect, in order.
A friend thinks comics are only for children. Explain why a graphic memoir deserves to be taken seriously.
Is it easier to be honest in words or in pictures? Argue one side, then give the best point for the other.