The Differences Between the Implied Author and the Narrator in Persepolis

The narrator in Marjane Satrapi Persepolis is a good example of Booth’s principle that “The narrator may be more or less distant from the implied author.” (Booth 156) Satrapi makes her purpose very clear from the beginning. She says in the introduction that “[Iran] should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists. [She] also [doesn’t] want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten” (Satrapi Introduction). But, the novel itself is less straightforward in its presentation because it is given from a child’s perspective as the child is coming to the complex self identity and conclusions that Satrapi has reached in adulthood.

Because the child narrator is Satrapi herself in the novel, the author and the narrator share much in common, such as their shared experiences, and in that sense the child narrator in Persepolis lacks significant distance from the implied author morally, intellectually, physically or temporally as Booth suggests. But, Persepolis is an excellent example of how “most authors are distant from even the most knowing narrator in that they presumably know how ‘everything turns out in the end’” (Booth 156).

The narrator blatantly reveals her confusion at the events surrounding her when she says “I really didn’t know what to think about the veil, deep down I was very religious but as a family we were very modern and Avant-Garde” (Satrapi 6). This shows the beginnings of her complex self-identification as a religious Iranian. Her child-like reactions to the complex political situation are also exemplified when she “stay[s] a very long time in the bath. [She] wanted to know what it felt like to be in a cell filled with water”(Satrapi 25) In her mind, she has blocked out the uncertain political situation and its consequences that her mother describes. Instead, she zooms in and focuses on the power and psychological effects of torture. This physical method of processing is indicative of her immaturity, but it brings her closer to the implied author.<

The angst and confusion that the narrator experiences are meant to endear the reader to her, and the intentional distance from the implied author that slowly closes as the novel progresses is meant to help guide the reader toward Satrapi’s purpose.