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The Veil
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Growing Up and Growing Old
Identity, Culture, and Self-Expression
Gender and Oppression
Suffering and Trauma
Summary
Analysis
As soon as Marjane catches sight of the customs agent at the Tehran airport, she remembers how oppressive Iran is. The agent asks if she has any pork, alcohol, or fashion magazines. He then asks her to fix her veil. Once she’s past customs Marjane spots her parents immediately. They, however, don’t recognize her until she taps Dad on the shoulder. Marjane only realizes how much she’s grown when she notices that she and Dad are now the same size. Dad now drives a Renault S instead of a Cadillac. Marjane used to be ashamed of the Cadillac and the privilege it denoted, but now she wishes Dad still had it. It would remind her of better days. When they get home, Marjane heads straight to her room. She’s overjoyed to be home and sits in the dark to enjoy it.
After four years in which no one seemed to care much about Marjane’s clothing, it’s a shock to have the customs agent balk at how Marjane wears her veil. When Marjane’s parents don’t recognize her right away, it drives home just how much she’s grown and changed in the last four years. Their daughter is an adult now, and the family will have to adapt to accommodate her new maturity.
Themes
In the morning, Marjane wakes up to snow. She hated snow in Vienna, but she’s excited to see it now. Looking around her room, Marjane thinks her furniture is too small, and she’s embarrassed by the punk drawings she drew on the wall. When Marjane digs for a Kim Wild tape to listen to, she can’t find one. In the kitchen, Mom offers Marjane breakfast. They giggle about Frau Doctor Heller’s disgusting tea and Mom says she’d like a cigarette. Marjane is shocked, but she realizes that Mom sees her as an adult now. Mom eventually explains that she gave Marjane’s tapes away. Rather than get upset, Marjane takes this as a sign that it’s time to look forward. She asks for a sponge and scrubs her punk drawings off the walls.
Marjane’s room represents who she was as a child. Now that she’s an adult, she sees how young and naïve she was at age 14, when she last saw this room. But even as Marjane looks around with disgust, there are still parts of her childhood that are comforting to her, like the Kim Wilde tapes. Listening to those tapes again would let Marjane escape to a more comfortable time—or, at least, a time that seems easier and less fraught in retrospect. But that Mom has since given the tapes away emphasize that Marjane can’t run back to her childhood and must continue to move forward.
Themes
Several hours later, Marjane hears Mom on the phone with one of Marjane’s childhood friends. Marjane shushes Mom; she doesn’t want her friends to know she’s back yet. In the afternoon, Marjane puts her veil on and walks around the city. It’s very different. Now, huge murals of martyrs decorate buildings. After seeing billboards advertising sausages for four years, Marjane realizes it’ll take a while to adjust. She also notices that many street names have been changed to honor martyrs. This is very unsettling; it makes the city feel like a graveyard of war victims. Marjane can’t bear it—especially since she wasn’t home to experience the war.
As she walks through Tehran, Marjane realizes that it is fundamentally different from the Tehran she left behind years ago. In particular, the war seems to be everywhere. The new street names and the murals honoring the martyrs ensure that no one is going to forget the war and everyone who died because of it. Since Marjane didn’t experience much of the war firsthand, though, it’s unsettling for her in a different way than it might be for others. She may feel guilty for not having been here to experience it.
Themes
Dad gets home late that night. Over dinner, he explains that they have to rebuild everything in the city. Mom adds that they rebuild just to prepare for the next war, which she says will inevitably destroy everything. Marjane is shocked to hear Mom sound so disillusioned. Fortunately, Dad changes the subject and asks about Marjane’s day. Marjane mentions how disquieting the streets are now that they’ve been renamed. Dad says it’s not even that bad in their neighborhood—in poor neighborhoods, nearly all the streets are named after martyrs. He insists that no one knows now why their children died. The war, in his estimation, was a setup to destroy Iran and Iraq’s armies. Now, after eight years of war, the state names streets after dead martyrs to try to flatter the martyrs’ families and make their deaths mean something.
When Dad brings up the fact that poorer neighborhoods have even more streets named after martyrs, Marjane has to confront her privilege yet again. She had the opportunity to leave the country and escape the war, but even if she’d stayed, she still wouldn’t have had it as bad as poorer Iranians. The effects of the war, though, are far-reaching, and Marjane’s parents are less hopeful about Iran’s future.
Themes
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Marjane notes that on TV, she also saw mothers who were “overjoyed” that their children died. Dad explains that the state has convinced people that martyrs live in luxury in the afterlife. He mentions that the war itself was like hell, and the months before the ceasefire were the worst. Dad explains that a month before the ceasefire, Iraq bombed Tehran daily. The state hadn’t announced the ceasefire yet when armed Iranians opposed to the Islamic regime (the Mujahideen) entered Iran from Iraq, supported by Saddam Hussein. Dad is shocked that Marjane hasn’t heard about this already, but Mom reminds Dad that Marjane has been in Europe.
Marjane’s parents don’t know that Marjane actively avoided any news of Iran during her time in Vienna. Though she avoided the news to protect herself from even more trauma, she now has to confront the truth of what happened to her home country, in addition to her own shame for not knowing about this sooner. This makes Marjane feel even worse about rejecting Iranian culture in favor of Western culture.
Themes
Continuing his story, Dad says that the Mujahideen knew most Iranians opposed the regime. They expected popular support. However, since they entered from Iraq, no one welcomed or supported them. The Guardians of the Revolution killed them. Dad says that the regime was worried. They knew that if the Mujahideen had reached Tehran, they would’ve freed imprisoned intellectuals who opposed the regime. To eliminate the problem, the state gave prisoners a choice: renounce their ideals and be freed, or be executed. The state executed tens of thousands of prisoners. The war, meanwhile, took up to a million lives. Dad says that this doesn’t account for the many people who were disabled, orphaned, or widowed. After Dad’s story, Marjane feels like everything that happened to her in Vienna is unimportant. She vows to never speak of her time in Austria.
Dad’s story drives home that Iran’s regime is willing to do anything to amass and keep its power. Killing intellectuals means killing any potential for opposition. It also frightens people like Marjane’s family, who are educated and oppose the regime—but now may be less willing to protest or fight for their rights. Even if Marjane didn’t have to experience these events firsthand, hearing about them is still traumatizing. This makes her feel guilty for leaving Iran and for ignoring what was going on—and since she didn’t see anything this bad in Europe, she believes she has no right to feel traumatized by her experiences in Vienna.
Themes
