How Does The Author Use Language Techniques in Persepolis Persepolis is a graphic novel written by Iranian French-speaking author named Marjane Satrapi. In general it is all about Satrapi grew up in Tehran in a family which was involved with communist and socialist movements in Iran prior to the Iranian Revolution and witnessed, as a child, the growing suppression of civil liberties and the everyday-life consequences of Iranian politics, including the fall of the Shah, and the first years of the Iran-Iraq War. The chapter that I am going to use is chapter called “The Bicycle”. It is the first chapter in the first Persepolis book and it tells us how cultural revolution in her home country, Iran changed her life drastically and take out her freedom to act like westerners. In this essay, I would like to discuss how effective the author use language techniques in terms of diction, figurative language, and imagery. In general, the author use in majority of very descriptive yet sharp languages in explaining situations occurred in the story. “Persepolis 1” is descriptive because it focuses more on the explanation and the description of the setting’s situation rather than expressing one’s opinion (which has some of the parts it occurs). In terms of diction, It was really brief and easier to understand due to simple vocabulary that is frequently being used in this graphic novel. There are some words that might tell the real or actual meaning of the word itself, which we sometimes called as denotation. One of the extract that I took is from page 17, which says “They burned the Rex Cinema tonight”. It conveys the actual meaning of its verb because the Rex Cinema is actually burnt down at the next picture, Some language techniques are used here. For example in page 12, Marji stated “The revolution is like bicycle, when the wheels don’t turn it falls,”.In this quotation, it proves that Satrapi uses simile to compare one concept of revolution into the other things that might equals to it. So, in this context Satrapi is trying to convey that the revolution will fall if there is no one act to it. Other than that, there are other figurative languages that I found in this chapter, which is personification. It refers to a figure of speech in which human characteristics are given to an animal or an object. According to page 14, it was written, “After a long sleep of 2500 years, the revolution finally awakened”. Through this quotation, the author is about to say that the revolution has finally begun after a long period of no movement. I classified this quotation as personification because the revolution pretended to act like human, where they can sleep or awakened, which in real life they won’t. Personification is being used in order to creates greater understanding to the reader As what I have said earlier, this graphic novel tends to be descriptive, so imagery would have a great role in the language use of this graphic novel. Although the illustrations are provided to stimulate our visual stimulus, Satrapi would have use some imagery in order to obtain greater understanding for reader”. Imagery is For example, in the chapter “The Bicycle”, in one of the parts it was written “Don’t I look like Che Guevara?”. This sentence can be
classified as visual imagery because this sentence emphasizes our visual senses to imagine if we are located at the same position as Marji. The word looks like is the main words that ignite imagery in this sentence. The other imagery that can be found is tactile imagery, which is an imagery that
pertains to a texture or sensation of touch. For example in page 54 in the first book, it quoted “They burn him with an iron..”. The quote taken from the book signifies that the author is trying to explain how it feels when the iron was attached into your body and how we can feel the burning sensation. After discussing three main aspects of language use in Persepolis, I can conclude that Satrapi had used these techniques successfully in order to send her messages to the reader. This statement could be proven, by having most of the language techniques in her writing like imagery, diction, and figurative languages, it helps the reader to understand what are the message that she tries to deliver through Persepolis and gain some knowledge about Iran-Iraq wars and how a teenage girl could deal with it.
