One thing I noticed while reading the first three chapters of Persepolis was the way Marjane Satrapi embodied the perspective of her ten year old self to deliver the story. The childlike innocence of the narrator comes across in the way she speaks and the conclusions she draws about her life and the things happening around her. Because the narrator isn’t old enough to grasp the full scale of the events in her life, she describes and reacts to events in a simplified way. This builds a sense of dramatic irony into the narrative. Every time the narrator stumbles upon something really emotional or profound, she says it in a very stark, unembellished way because she doesn’t know the gravity of what she is saying or thinking about. However, we as readers do understand how powerful, thought provoking, and heartbreaking some of these statements are. This makes those moments even more powerful because we feel not only the emotions and implications of the actual events of the story, but also the emotions and implications that come with the narrator not understanding situation fully. We are saddened by the events of the story, cheered by the narrator’s childlike happy-go-lucky demeanor, before being saddened again by the realization that the narrator can’t comprehend the tragic events surrounding her. It’s this second sadness, the tearing down of our emotional barriers so soon after they had been built back up, that really lends weight and impact to Marjane Satrapi’s storytelling.