Iris functions as both a character and a symbol related to Time, Memory, and Redemption. For most of the novel, Augie believes she is a real girl who was left behind in the chaos of the evacuation. However, implausibilities and Augie’s own fleeting doubts hint that Iris may not be a living child. In the end, Lily Brooks-Dalton reveals that Augie imagined Iris in the isolation of his last year of life.

The twist solidifies Iris as a symbol of Augie’s shame and regret. Having abandoned the real-life Iris before her birth, Augie spent most of his life suppressing his guilt and ignoring his parental responsibilities. Recalling the anonymous gifts he once sent to his daughter, he claims that when he lost track of her and her mother, “he thought of the extraordinary woman and her child rarely, and eventually he forgot them altogether” (8). The imagined Iris’s presence in the Arctic reveals the lasting impression that Jean and the real Iris in fact made on Augie. Imagined-Iris becomes Augie’s shadow throughout the novel, following him around the Arctic and slowly eliciting the love and care that Augie never allowed himself to feel or show before.