If a person were to hastily flip through the pages of the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, using only their eyes to judge, the book could easily be dismissed as a simple piece of literature additional. Their inner literary critic might cry out in bewilderment and their mind might marvel at how they came across something that was surely destined for the children's comics section. However, upon closer examination of the book's literary content and the power of its simplified illustrations, such an easy-to-assume accusation turns out to be fatally incorrect. Persepolis is the memoir of a young woman growing up in Iran's decimating national conflicts of the 1970s, depicted alongside a strikingly simplified art style. At first glance, it may seem that this is done purely for the sake of unique marketing or because it is simply Satrapi's natural drawing style. Closer examination, however, will reveal that “…a form of amplification through simplification” (McCloud, 30) is achieved and that visual support is given to the text in a way that realistic or more “serious” art could not accomplish. Although simplified in form From an artistic approach, Persepolis is anything but simplified in content. When a writer chooses to include illustrations in a piece of literature, the first task is to decide what level of abstraction/realism the art will present. In the case of Persepolis, a simplified art style works best, as it only amplifies the main features of the text, unlike realism which would be much more focused on social details. Given the book's heavy subject matter (both about a war beyond massive devastation and the metamorphosis of a young girl caught in her trauma), Persepolis has a lot of information to cover in the middle of the paper. ..... captivating and personally significant aspects of his experience. Through its generality and lack of explicit realism, Satrapi invigorates the book's deepest messages in a way that extends beyond the written word and into conceptual imagery. “By minimizing the appearance of the physical world…the cartoon places itself in the world of concepts” (McCloud 41), concepts that convey the subjective, but still all too true, life of Marjane Satrapi. This simplified and symbolic universe is neither Iran, nor Austria, nor France; it’s Marjane’s Persepolis. Works Cited McCloud, Scott. Understanding comics: the invisible art. New York: HyperCollinsPublishers, 1993. PrintStrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of Childhood. Paris, France: L’Association, 2003. Print. Strapi, Marjane. Persepolis 2: The Return Story. Paris, France: L'Association, 2004.Print