Lee and Satrapi's use of first-person perspective is designed to challenge the readers' values and present the intolerance of their public societies through clashing public and personal values.
Through the use of textual and graphical irony in both To Kill a Mockingbird and Persepolis, Lee and Satrapi explore the clashing values of their protagonists and the intolerant public societies they are depicting. In the case of To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout notices the ironic hypocrisy of her third grade teacher, Miss Caroline. Miss Caroline is condemning Hitler and his persecution of Jews, whilst supporting white superiority and racial segregation in America. Scout later asks her brother Jem, "how can you hate Hitler so bad and be so ugly about folks right at home?" Scout's upbringing within an unprejudiced family allows her values to be more tolerant than those of Miss Caroline and the wider Maycomb society, enabling her to see clearly through Miss Caroline's hypocrisy. Lee uses this technique to challenge Miss Caroline's intolerant thinking, and more broadly the intolerance of Southern American society. Similar techniques are used by Satrapi in Persepolis to highlight the intolerance and oppression of the adult public society. An example of ironic hypocrisy is when Marji is told by her teacher to tear out the photos of the previous Iranian Shah from her school books. Marji replies, "But she was the one who told us that the Shah was chosen by God!" When Marji's teacher hears her stating the previous Shah was chosen by God, she tells Marji she mustn't say things like that, presenting a clear hypocrisy. Marji, similar to Scout, is more progressive and "avant-garde" than the religiously intolerant and oppressive Iranian society and is therefore able as a character to challenge her society by pointing out its hypocrisies. Both Satrapi and Lee use the values of their protagonists in comparison to their public worlds to present the inequalities of their societies through graphical and textual irony.
