What do you think is a possible theme in the chapter entitled "The Soup"? What could be another theme for "The Soup"? What is the significant message communicated in the final panel of "The Soup"? Why did Zozo pack Marji off to a convent?

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return is about the life and experiences of Marji, a young Iranian woman. She lives with her mother in Vienna and is going to school there. Her father has recently passed away from cancer, and her mother has gone back to Iran to visit family. While she is alone in Vienna, Marji becomes interested in a boy named Walter who goes to school nearby. She also meets another girl named Lucia, who becomes her roommate at boarding school. Marji goes on an excursion with Lucia and meets Walter again. They have dinner together at his house, but when Walter's father finds out that they are not cousins, he forbids them from seeing each other ever again.

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Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return is a sequel to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood . Told in graphic novel format, both books tell stories about Satrapi’s life. The first book begins in her childhood, and the sequel continues with her experience in high school...

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Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return is a sequel to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. Told in graphic novel format, both books tell stories about Satrapi’s life. The first book begins in her childhood, and the sequel continues with her experience in high school and college.

"The Soup" is the opening chapter in Persepolis 2, and it introduces the reader to Marji’s current life in an Austrian boarding school. When the previous book closed, Marji was going to live with Zozo, a friend of her mother’s, but we quickly learn that Zozo sent Marji to live in a boarding house ran by nuns. There, she must share a room with a girl named Lucia, who Marji gets along with well.

During the time she lived with Zozo and her family, Marji grew uncomfortable with the way that Zozo bickered with her husband over money and was troubled by the fact that Shirin, Zozo’s daughter, was so focused on material things that she had lost emotion for what was happening in Iran. Zozo ultimately decided that the boarding house would be a better idea, and Marji happily went along with the plan.

One of the themes of this chapter is that of the other. When Marji is staying at Zozo’s house, she expects to feel at home but instead feels very much the outsider. She does not fit into the dynamic the family has in place and often feels that hiding away in her room is her best bet. Once she enters the boarding house, she is marked as separate from the nuns because she does not ascribe to Catholicism and she does not fit in with her fellow students, because she does not speak German and does not understand them.

In the final panel of the chapter, Marji sneaks out of the television room quietly when she realizes that she cannot follow the movie. She tries to say goodbye to Lucia, but her farewell is not acknowledged. The one person in the room who Marji likes and shares herself with seemingly does not notice that she is missing. This leads to another theme of the chapter, namely, independence. From the moment that Marji left Iran, she was on her own. While she expected to become a part of Zozo’s family, she instead was sent to a boarding school, where she was responsible for doing her own laundry and cooking her own food. Once she meets Lucia, she finds that she is also responsible for teaching herself German so that she can function as a member of the boarding house community.

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