Then and Now Narration in Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi makes expert use of "then and now" narration in Persepolis, allowing for a deeper understanding of a child's experience growing up in Iran. The "then" voice narrates from the point of view of Satrapi as a child and is conveyed through dialogue bubbles in tandem with expletive illustrations of Satrapi. The "now" voice, Satrapi's adult point of view, conveys intimate personal reflection. The "now" is given to us in the narration boxes at the top of the frames. The use of then and now narration draws tension and meaning between experience and the passing of time.

The then voice conveys the reactions/emotions experienced during the event while the now voice makes meaning of the reaction. In the last frame on page 3, Satrapi's "now" voice primes us for the illustration with "we didn't really like to wear the veil, especially since we didn't understand why we had to." In the frame we see ten school girls playing with their veils with six dialogue bubbles that show the girls' reactions to the veils. The girls mimic the adult world, applying socially relevant, current, adult speech and action to their recess games with blurbs like "execution in the name of freedom"where one girl, who is veiled, mimics extremist violence towards an unveiled, "decadent" girl. This dual narration allows us to inhabit the experience of the children while understanding the significant and grave implications within the experience.

At times the "then and now" narrative voices merge, showing the painful moments when a child begins to glean adult insight and apply it to their lives. On page 24, child Satrapi has learned that while imprisoned, her grandfather was forced into a cell filled with water for hours at a time. In the first frame she appears inquisitive and quite fearless with her body upright and engaged while in the subsequent frame she has puddled onto the couch, as if she had fallen backwards from shock. The child's perspective here seems to be an extended, unintentional state of suspended disbelief, where one experiences"a suspension of one's critical faculties in order to believe the unbelievable." For the child, however, the "unbelievable" is often a factual component of the real, adult world. 

We see Satrapi as a child, quite beautifully, grappling with the convergence of adult understanding and child understanding in the two final frames on page 25. First she is shown wide-eyed in the bathtub, where we see her brain making sense of "what it felt like to be in a cell filled with water."Satrapi tries to understand the feeling and concept of torture with her body. In the final frame, she is looking down at her hands while the "now" voice states,"my hands were wrinkled when I came out, like Grandpa's," suggesting she is on the verge of recognition as the experience and reflection coalesce.

While Satrapi is obviously narrating all of Persepolis as an adult, her ability to remember and inhabit her childhood perspective makes the story more accessible and affects us with hyper-empathy and hyper-sensitivity.