Now that I could no longer think of me as a teacher, a writer, whom I could no longer wear what I wanted, nor walk on the street at my passage, shout if I was going to do it or give a pat on the shoulder to a male colleague , now that all this had become illegal, I felt evanescent, artificial, an imaginary character resulting from the pencil of a designer that any rubber would have been enough to cancel
(Now that I could no longer think of me as a teacher, a writer, whom I could no longer wear what I wanted, nor walk on the street at my passage, shout if I was going to do it or give a pat on the shoulder to a male colleague , now that all this had become illegal, I felt evanescent, artificial, an imaginary character resulting from the pencil of a designer that any rubber would have been enough to cancel)
阿扎尔·纳菲西（Azar Nafisi）在“在德黑兰阅读洛丽塔（Lolita）”中，反思了她在压迫性环境中遇到的深刻个人变化，扼杀了她作为老师和作家的身份。她描述了一种损失感，她无法再表达自己的个性，穿着自己的意愿或与同事自由互动。社会规范所施加的限制使她感觉像幻影，剥夺了她真实的自我，并沦为仅仅对别人的想象力的构想。
这种经历强调了在镇压政权中争取自我认同的斗争，在这种政权中，个人自由受到限制，从而导致了隐形和不真实的感觉。纳菲西（Nafisi）的叙事唤起了她对自己可能成为自己的生活的强大渴望，这表明社会约束对个人身份和表达的深刻影响。通过她的凄美写作，她说明了面对专制控制的个人和知识自由的脆弱性。