Compared to Road to Perdition, Jean-Dominique Bauby’s memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is based cleanly in the narrator’s present. While the act of Michael’s composition of his narrative was interspersed throughout Road to Perdition, the only non-composition action that takes place in the present of the graphic novel is the ending reveal of Michael’s vocation. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, on the other hand, sits more firmly in its present; Bauby selects memories from his past to share with the reader as filtered through his present mindset, instead of plopping the reader directly into the narrative as in Road to Perdition wherein the filter was much subtler. The intellectual distance of the narrator from the content is certainly present in Road to Perdition, but in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly acknowledges it. Many of Bauby’s memories are occupied with the accident that crippled him and realities of the accompanying convalescence. Bauby tells of his diagnosis, his introduction to the wheelchair, visits from friends and family—the typical fixtures of his locked-in life. More interesting, however, is which memories of his past life—the life before the accident—he chooses to recall. 
Most of the other memories Bauby evokes are similarly chosen for their poignancy in light of his accident. 
 The relatively insignificant incident of shaving has, to Bauby, become intensely symbolic in a way he could not have anticipated at the time. 

But Bauby lived enough to have many books’ worth of memories—so why these? In The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Bauby doesn’t mention his mother or any siblings. He barely mentions his children’s mother but in passing. So much of what one might deem essential is in effect missing from Bauby’s memoir.  Why do we spend ten pages on a week in Lourdes from twenty years ago? For no reason but that the memory relates to his present condition—because he experiences a momentary awareness of a troop of invalids and finds himself utterly alienated from it. Now, an invalid himself, it is something to mull over. That is the unifying principle behind Bauby’s selective memory: if a memory is thrust into particularly poignant light by his massive stroke, it is important enough to ruminate upon and include in his memoir, his account of the past wholly influenced by his present.
	Bauby’s intention is not necessarily to manipulate the reader. It is most likely his selectivity simply stems from a natural preoccupation with those types of memories following his accident. Likewise, Michael of Road to Perdition appears to have no intention of proselytization via his narrative; in fact, within Michael’s narrative itself, his profession is never alluded to. In both cases, the selections the author makes in the course of constructing his text are influenced not with intent to deceive but by a (probably) subconscious predilection for certain kinds of memories or details. Any account of a past event cannot be separated from the present reality of the storyteller. Humans are subjective creatures largely incapable of recounting a story absent their personal filter. And the filter, perhaps, adds stylistic color—as it is an unavoidable part of storytelling, it may as well be artistic. Fortunately, in both Road to Perdition and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, it is.
