During the book, Persepolis, (the history of which is described in Inquiry One) the lead character, Marji Satrapi, experiences some extremely sad and angering experiences in her life, such as witnessing through her life friends and family being killed and hearing about them being executed. She learned a lot about not only her persona but the people and place around her.
When story first begins, Marji thinks that the Shah was chosen by God, as it was said in her school books (and by God himself so she says). She wanted to be a prophet and make everybody's lives better. She was much more naive, and seemed to think she knew everything about her country and what exactly she supported and what she didn't. She did not understand at first, her parents motives for protesting in the street. Her views seemed to revolve around her troubles at school, such as the veil (yet again I mention it) and the fact that the boys and girls were separated in their school. Like I said, she was naive.
By the center of the book she began to realize what the war really meant and how detrimental it was to the people she lived with and around. Her uncle Anoosh comes to visit them and he tells her stories about his life under cover and fighting for a revolution. When he is taken to jail and executed, Marji realizes that the war is a terrible thing, and is ruining many lives. She no longer speaks of becoming a prophet and her visits from God stop. Her views of her family and her country begin to change, though she still holds the same headstrongness that she had before.
By the end of the book, when Marji "grows up" at the age of fourteen and her parents send her to Vienna for safety, her parents being forced to stay behind because of limits in the country, Marji has a much more mature view of the war and the situation at hand. She understands now that it is going to take much more than being a prophet to fix Iran. She realizes that she is only a small being in a large world and cannot fix everything herself, no matter how lovely it would be. She sees that she can play virtually no role in the fixing of her broken country... and broken it is as she realizes. As far as her family goes, she sees that, even though through the book she is trying to lie and say that her grandfather had been to jail and was tortured, and her relatives were heros of all kinds. I think by the end of her book she realizes that her family are heros exactly the way they were and how much she really loves and respects them. Overall, Marji becomes less naive and more informed of the world around her.
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