What happens in Chapter 1 of Persepolis?
The opening chapter of Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir introduces ten-year-old Marji as she faces the abrupt enforcement of the veil in 1980 Iran, just a year after the Islamic Revolution. It begins with a class photograph: Marji is noticeably apart from her veiled classmates, her expression hard to read. She shares how the veil became mandatory at her school, creating a divide among her peers — some girls treat their veils as toys or props, while others pretend to be nuns or horses. Marji finds herself in a tug-of-war between two worlds: she is the daughter of progressive, secular parents who participate in anti-veil protests, yet she is also a devout child who talks to God in private and dreams of being a prophet. The chapter concludes with this core conflict — a girl whose spiritual beliefs clash with the political realities around her. Satrapi immediately sets the autobiographical stakes: this childhood is shaped not by innocence but by an ideology imposed upon her before she can fully grasp its implications.
Analysis
Satrapi's craft in this opening chapter is strikingly simple. The black-and-white panels strip away any romantic notions of culture, presenting it as a flat geometric shape — a visual bluntness that reflects the arbitrary nature of the decree itself. The class photograph that begins the chapter is a brilliant piece of irony: a document intended to symbolize unity instead highlights division, with Marji isolated even among her classmates.
The chapter operates on two levels throughout. On the surface, it presents a child's bewildered account of playground absurdity — veils turned into games. Beneath that, Satrapi reveals the initial fracture between private identity and public performance, a tension that will fuel the entire memoir. The idea of the veil as a costume rather than a conviction is introduced here and remains unresolved.
Satrapi's choice to start with the first-person plural — "We didn't really like to wear the veil" — is subtly radical. It asserts a collective girlhood experience while immediately distinguishing Marji from it. The tone shifts within a single page from wry humor to something more unsettling when Marji's religious feelings come to light: she is not just a secular child rebelling against religious rules but a believer whose faith is being co-opted by a state she doesn't yet know how to critique. That gap — between true devotion and institutionalized religion — marks the memoir's first and most enduring irony.
Key quotes from Chapter 1
“We didn't really like to wear the veil, especially since we didn't understand why we had to.”
Satrapi opens the memoir with this collective statement, immediately establishing the gap between imposed rule and comprehended meaning.
“I was born with religion. At the age of six I was already sure I was the last prophet.”
Marji introduces her private spiritual life, complicating any simple reading of her as a secular child resisting theocracy.
“The year of the revolution I had to wear the veil at school. I really didn't know what to think about the veil deep down.”
Satrapi captures the child's genuine ideological confusion — neither full resistance nor acceptance — which anchors the memoir's moral honesty from its first pages.