Lost Youth

Thesis: In Persepolis and The Things They Carried, war wrecks young lives and needs to be coped with, but a childhood can be recovered.

Claims:

1. In Persepolis, Marji, a victim of war in her country, is forced to grow up too quickly.
- The images of torture, such as the iron, that Marji hears about are too shocking for a ten-year-old. “I never imagined that you could use that appliance for torture” (51).
- Marji goes to the basement to escape the destruction of war around her. “It was awful. But this was not the moment to give in. With this first cigarette, I kissed childhood goodbye” (117).
- At age 14, Marji left her family to escape the war and live alone in Vienna. “what I had feared was true…we’d never live together again” (152).

2. In The Things They Carried, the soldiers are boys forced to become men too early.
- “The average age in our platoon, I’d guess, was nineteen or twenty, and as a consequence things often took on a curiously playful atmosphere…Like when Azar blew up Ted Lavender’s puppy. ‘What’s everybody so upset about?’ Azar said. ‘I mean, Christ, I’m just a boy’” (37).
- “The whole platoon stood there watching, feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo. Curt Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world….Rat Kiley was crying (79).
- “He grabbed Kiowa by the boot and tried to pull him out. He pulled hard but Kiowa was gone, and suddenly he felt himself going, too” (149). “[Norman] three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown” (155).

3. By not always taking matters like torture and death seriously, victims of war can seriously cope with them.
- “No one took the torture sessions seriously anymore. As for me, I immediately started making fun of them” (Satrapi 97).
- “Dave Jensen went over and shook the [dead] old man’s hand. ‘How-dee-doo,’ he said. One by one the others did it too” (O’Brien 226).
- “By slighting death, by acting, we pretended it was not the terrible thing it was” (O’Brien 238).

4. Marji in Persepolis and Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried are trying to hold on to their innocence.
- The night before Marji leaves for Vienna, her grandmother comes to stay with her. “Can I sleep with you?” asked Marji (150). “That’s why I’m here!” her grandmother replied (150). “I smelled my grandma’s bosom. It smelled good. I’ll never forget that smell” (150).
- “I’m skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story.”

So What: O’Brien and Satrapi are saying that while war damages young lives and needs to be coped with, the innocence of youth can be preserved. They are both trying to distill hope into their readers despite the cruelties of war.