Show, Don't Tell

In Marjane Satrapi's "The Complete Persepolis," there are moments where she illustrates events without using too much dialogue or narration to describe them. One particular moment that I would like to discuss happens on pages 307-309.

For these three pages, Satrapi only uses images to depict what's going on. There's no dialogue, and no narration besides a single tag on the first panel on 307 which reads "and then one night." In just 25 panels, Satrapi clearly shows us what's going on: the police catch her and her friends having a party, the mad dash as they dump the alcohol down the toilet, and the men running across the rooftops where one of them falls. We can extrapolate from the previous pages that people could be arrested for partying, and that it was common for Satrapi and her friends to get arrested.

What makes this scene on pages 307-309 stand out is the fact that someone dies while trying to avoid getting arrested. Having no dialogue or narration adds to the tension when they're trying not to get caught, and a somberness to the moment their friend falls. Even on page 310, when dialogue comes back into play, it's only a policeman who speaks, and all he says is that their friend has "gone to hell" and that they're being arrested (obviously in crueler words). I feel as if the scene wouldn't have had the same affect if there had been narration also describing the actions. The silence makes the scene.