A couple of other people have talked about their dissatisfaction with the ambivalent ending. I too, was struck by it, but this wasn’t the first time. The copy I have is divided into two volumes (Persepolis and Persepolis 2). The ending of the first volume was also very jarring. She suddenly leaves for Austria, her mother faints at the airport, and the end. Apparently in the original French, it was divided into four volumes (Persepolis 1-4), averaging at 90 pages each and was later combined in a single volume in 2007. This made me wonder if the other volumes also ended in an awkward fashion and where she chose to end them.

I think part of the reason people found the endings so dissatisfying in their ambivalence is that there’s no real structured plot to the story (not to say that that’s a bad thing!). Things just sort of happen. The narrative moves along and people get sucked into it, but when there’s no longer a story left to tell, it just ends. Some memoirists try to tie things up in a nice little bow as a means of explaining what they think the meaning of life is. I don’t think Satrapi does that. She’s just here to tell her story and that’s it.

I wonder if I wouldn’t think there was so much of a discord in the overall story if I’d read it in four separate volumes. To me, Persepolis 2 is far more distinctly a memoir (with less of an emphasis on historical events). It’s about adolescence, growing up, angst over guys, etc. It seems disconnected from the first volume (maybe that’ s the intent?). However, if it were divided in smaller pieces, maybe I would find everything blends together better? This is also my second time reading it. I wonder if I had read it in a single volume the first time my reactions would be different. It reminds me of the trade paperbacks a lot of American comic books publishers put out, collecting several issues (or one story arc) into one book. Would you get more of a sense of the story if you did or did not have to wait between issues/volumes? Or does it not matter because maybe Satrapi’s ambivalence is intentional (as opposed to being the product of weak structure)?