How Marjane's identity as a child was so important to her during these difficult years in Iran?

The opening pages of the narrative are a reflection on the search for identity. Like the graphic representation of her life, Marjane’s childhood is very black and white. She understands right and wrong and seeks to proclaim justice. Satrapi uses personification to create a God character as a child might imagine it. This reflection on childhood, however, is also a reflection on partial identity. The opening frames of the novel depict a group of girls, covered in veils. Marjane tells the reader that she is only partially in the picture. This represents the author’s own search for identity. Her identity is fractured both because of her childish understanding of the world and because of the religious fundamentalism being imposed on the country by the Islamic rulers. The novel, thus, is her attempt to recount and reclaim her own personal identity as a person and as an Iranian.

Throughout the novel, Satrapi plays with techniques of point of view. She relates the history of Iran and the persecution of its people not just from her perspective but also from the perspectives of her parents, her grandmother, and from others with firsthand knowledge of the political and social situation of Iran during this period. These points of view, however, are always interconnected to the author’s own point of view. Satrapi connects and interweaves the stories of those around her into her own process of self-actualization and growing up.