[colechristensen]

What's jarring to many people is it isn't the three act hero's journey of a noble savage. The "something" going on is that it isn't a copy of just about the only narrative in western mythos:

1. Departure - from a humble background the subject leaves amid struggle

2. Growth and Initiation - the subject discovers who they are building themselves into the hero they'll become

3. Heroic Return - the now hero makes a return to their beginnings to great success

Instead, Persepolis is a much more realistic story and each act is around three very different kinds of strife experienced by our hero and only in the very end a kind of coda where things go well.

My criticism of the criticism is that Persepolis is tremendously more realistic than the hero's journey and people are jarred by it because it doesn't represent their imagination of what real world struggle is like, the fact that it upsets people is one of those deep core societal issues because of the wrongness of the lens people see the world through.

[everdrive]

I think you make a fine analysis, but I would just offer that real life can be quite jarring and uncomfortable. So a story which paints a very real picture of life (rather than constructing a narrative) might just be unpleasant. I don't think her story is poorly written, and I think it is quite memorable.

For reference, I also really enjoyed the Catcher in the Rye, and there are some superficial similarities: a young person is scarred by events in their lives and succumbs to depression. (there are a myriad of differences between the two stories -- I'm not drawing an equivalence, just making one comparison)

Catcher in the Rye is probably best read as an angry teenager: you meet Holden Caufield and he's witty, cynical, funny, defiant, etc. You might fall in love with the character, but what you ultimately learn is that he's a miserable failure; he lost the battle with his depression and so many of the people he was cutting down were just normal, decent people trying to enjoy their lives.

Crucially, we never meet Holden when he is young, bright eyed, and innocent. The narrative structure shows us who he is right away, and we the reader learn that this is actually quite a bad thing throughout the course of the story.

Persepolis works a bit differently: we spend the first half of the book with innocent, bright-eyed Marjane and we fall in love with that character. The character we fall in love with is taken from us by the events of the story, by living unsupervised in exile, etc. It's nothing but sad. It's well-written, it's very memorable, but I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling unhappy about an unhappy turn of events.

[srean]

> So a story which paints a very real picture of life (rather than constructing a narrative) might just be unpleasant.

May be, but to someone going through similar life experiences an honest story might give their internal emotions some validation. Art can do wonders in that "I am not the only one" aspect.

Ethan Hawke talks about that aspect of art here https://youtu.be/WRS9Gek4V5Q?si=P2Hz1ZnXWlP93f2U

One of my favorite videos.

[p-e-w]

Persepolis absolutely DOES use the “hero’s journey” narrative archetype you’re claiming it avoids. The second part even ends by explicitly stating that she has grown into a different person, and is now ready to “face the world” when she leaves her family for the second time.

Indeed, the story is quite Western overall, which is perhaps unsurprising, given that the author had already been living in the West for over a decade when she wrote it.

[spwa4]

You mean Iran had been pushing itself west/modern and was quite western by 1979. So she was raised as a young girl into a western context, despite that people now want to deny this existed.

Even back then the mullahs and islam were looked upon as an external occupation force to some extent. Now 10x worse of course, but even back then. A lot of people seem to want to see some sort of alternative/sufficiently different state/society succeed, even if that means totally falsifying history.

[Xmd5a]

> western mythos

There is almost nothing more Western than this kind of self-criticism: blaming oneself for not having imagined a wider range of possibilities. By the time this reflex reaches your shore, any criticism you might address to it has already been pre-assimilated into its canon. Worse: you may not even be heard, because the whole discourse is already busy talking about the voices it has supposedly suppressed.

That is the trick. It is often less interested in articulating what was actually suppressed than in endlessly reaffirming that something was suppressed. Self-criticism becomes a passion of the self: the subject punishes itself for not being the idealized Other, and in doing so expands its own range of motion.

Criticism becomes assimilation: it uproots you from the very world it claims to redeem. And the only way out of the double bind is to set off for distant shores, carrying the trial with you.

[watwut]

I kind of resent that "western" started to be used as synonym for "America". Specifically this particular schema along with insistence with happy ending is specific feature of American book writing and cinema. Non American literature is much more likely to go out of that schematic.

To whoever is downvoting this: it is not even a criticism. Just a description. When you discuss stories, Americans will frequently insist on the "hero story is the only one possible fun story" and simultaneously interpret bad ending as punishment for moral failure. French wont argue that all that often. And European literature is in general more likely not be that.

And second, using "western" as synonym for "american" wherever the author knows a lot about American and just assumes everything in Europe is exactly the same is something I noticed multiple times on HN.

[colechristensen]

I'm talking about something much broader than the saccharine happy ending motif of Disney movies.

I'm paraphrasing The Hero with a Thousand Faces which is a study of world mythology, not 20th century American storytelling. This hero story is found around the world but PARTICULARLY in descendants of the proto-indo-european culture, particularly ancient Greece and the western Roman empire.

It's not "happy endings" I'm talking about but the hero being taken out of their world, finding themselves and growing, and returning... a hero, the story of individual progress and success.

[watwut]

And I am saying that when I read western literature from Europe, a LOT of it was not hero journey thing.

I am saying that hero journey as you desribe it is absolutely NOT the only western narrative, if you include non american literature. And I am saying that when someone insist on that being the only narrative, they are typically american.

And someone else (who probably reads more american then me) told me even american literature actually contains other narratives too.

[projektfu]

American novels frequently don't follow these tropes. It's more of a Hollywood thing, part of telling a satisfying story in 100-160 minutes.