In my English Composition 1302 course, our class is to write an analytical response to the graphic memoir by David Small's’, “Stitches.” This autobiographical novel entails the dark and abusive childhood of David Small through comical images. Small demonstrates the rough parts that shaped his life with a truthful approach to difficult topics that were mostly evaded. The novel revolves around his childhood and the relationship between him and his dysfunctional family. Small even reveals his family history in relation to himself and sees where his parent’s failings came from. There are many heavy matters that are not easy to put into words.
For my topic I have chosen to write on how this graphic text was David’s way of using literature as an outlet to deal with his traumatic experiences. Literature allowed Small the freedom to deal with his fears through fantasy, and seek an alternative reality that displays his trauma in unique ways. Part of David’s healing process was empowered by reconstructing the story and transforming his ordinary memories. It is understandable why Small chose a graphic memoir instead of a purely verbal memoir because where words were no longer sufficient, his drawings supplemented and gave meaning. This is why the graphic memoir plays such an important role in his healing process because Small was able to recreate his childhood memories into images in the memoir that words by themselves could not access these memories. His traumatic memories lacked the verbal narrative and context so they were encoded into the form of vivid sensations and images.
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He focuses mainly on the facial expressions of characters. He became adept at reading his character's emotions, especially his mother’s. Faces of characters will fill panels and leave nothing else to look at, but the facial expression, and its
Authors use many different types of imagery in order to better portray their point of view to a reader. This imagery can depict many different things and often enhances the reader’s ability to picture what is occurring in a literary work, and therefore is more able to connect to the writing. An example of imagery used to enhance the quality of a story can be found in Leyvik Yehoash’s poem “Lynching.” In this poem, the imagery that repeatably appears is related to the body of the person who was lynched, and the various ways to describe different parts of his person. The repetition of these description serves as a textual echo, and the variation in description over the course of the poem helps to portray the events that occurred and their importance from the author to the reader. The repeated anatomic imagery and vivid description of various body parts is a textual echo used by Leyvik Yehoash and helps make his poem more powerful and effective for the reader and expand on its message about the hardship for African Americans living
When faced with a traumatic experience, one’s true nature reveals itself. The trauma forces those suffering from it to cope. How one copes is directly linked to their personality. Some will push everything away, while others will hold whatever they can close. Both of these coping mechanisms can be observed in the two short stories “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” and “A Rose for Emily,” the two protagonists prominent characteristics distinctly affect the way the protagonists copes when faced with trauma and the outcome of the short stories endings. To begin, Granny Weatherall is a prideful control freak. While, in contrast, Miss Emily is delusional and stubborn.
“ The horizon was the color of milk. Cold and fresh. Poured out among the bodies” (Zusak 175). The device is used in the evidence of the quote by using descriptives words that create a mental image. The text gives the reader that opportunity to use their senses when reading the story. “Somehow, between the sadness and loss, Max Vandenburg, who was now a teenager with hard hands, blackened eyes, and a sore tooth, was also a little disappointed” (Zusak 188). This quote demonstrates how the author uses descriptive words to create a mental image which gives the text more of an appeal to the reader's sense such as vision. “She could see his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color of eggshells. Whisker coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and flat. He had a small but misshapen nose” (Zusak 201). The quotes allows the reader to visualize what the characters facial features looked like through the use of descriptive words. Imagery helps bring the story to life and to make the text more exciting. The reader's senses can be used to determine the observations that the author is making about its characters. The literary device changes the text by letting the reader interact with the text by using their observation skills. The author is using imagery by creating images that engages the reader to know exactly what's going on in the story which allows them to
Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, documents the author's discovery of her own and her father's homosexuality. The book touches upon many themes, including, but not limited to, the following: sexual orientation, family relationships, and suicide. Unlike most autobiographical works, Bechdel uses the comics graphic medium to tell her story. By close-reading or carefully analyzing pages fourteen through seventeen in Fun Home one can get a better understanding of how a Bechdel employs words and graphic devices to render specific events. One can also see how the specific content of the pages thematically connects to the book as a whole. As we will see, this portion of the book echoes the strained relationship between Bruce Bechdel and his family and his attempts to disguise his homosexuality by creating the image of an ideal family, themes which are prevalent throughout the rest of the nook.
A person’s life is often a journey of study and learning from errors and mistakes made in the past. In both James Joyce’s Araby and John Updike’s A&P, the main characters, subjected to the events of their respective stories, are forced to reflect upon their actions which failed to accomplish their original goal in impressing another character. Evidently, there is a similar thematic element that emerges from incidents in both short stories, which show maturity as an arduous process of learning from failures and a loss of innocence. By analyzing the consequences of the interaction of each main character; the Narrator in Araby and Sammy in A&P; and their persons of infatuation, Mangan’s sister
Humans are never perfect, and their emotions often conflict with their logic. In “The Scarlet Ibis”, the narrator receives a physically disabled brother, Doodle, thus trains Doodle physically so that he could live a normal life. Throughout the story, the narrator’s actions and thoughts reveals his true personalities to the audience as he slowly narrates the story of himself and his scarlet ibis, Doodle, whose existence he dreaded. In the story written by James Hurst, pride, love, and cruelty, these conflicting character traits all exists in Doodle’s brother. And the most severe of all, pride.
“Stitches” by David Small is a graphic novel where he visually describes his childhood. Small shows how he perceived his family relationships as a child and his own perspective of the world at the time. He clearly depicts his family’s dysfunctionality that prevented him the ability to display his self expression. Small encountered various events throughout his novel that added a different element to his understanding of relationships, specifically with his parents. As Small matured, these events played a critical role on his ultimate understanding of their complicated relationship.
By using comic as a medium of transferring the concept, David Small has successfully guilt the readers through the silence and secret of his childhood.
The text exhibits tragic, depressing, and disturbing diction and it impacts the reader because it makes them feel sympathetic
Trauma is a disturbing experience that causes deep stress and possible anxiety. Traumatic incidents are thought to involve victimization. Examples of traumatic events range from witness, physical attack, emotional or sexual child abuse, to the sudden death or disabling illness of a loved one. Traumatic events in particular, possibly leads to a multitude of symptoms, including depression, guilt and obsessive thought about the victimization experience. Trauma and the body can be perceived in a literary context in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Jean Rhys’s, Wide Sargasso Sea and Danticat’s, The Farming of Bones.
The metaphors and symbols these authors use through their imagery help us better understand the emotional state of the characters. Though Udall’s story “The Wig” ends with better lives for the characters involved, Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily,” is a more grim and macabre testament to the necessity of communication after loss. And, well, who knows what more strange habits the son might adopt in “The Wig,” had the father not embraced
The speaker reflects on the teenage girl’s childhood as she recalls the girl played with “dolls that did pee-pee” (2). This childish description allows the speaker to explain the innocence of the little girl. As a result, the reader immediately feels connected to this cute and innocent young girl. However, the speaker’s diction evolves as the girl grew into a teenager as she proclaims: “She was healthy, tested intelligent, / possessed strong arms and back, / abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity” (7-9). The speaker applies polished language to illustrate the teen. This causes the reader not only to see the girl as an adult, but also to begin to grasp the importance of her situation. The speaker expresses what the bullies told this girl as she explains: “She was advised to play coy, / exhorted to come on hearty” (12-13). The sophisticated diction shifts towards the girl’s oppressors and their cruel demands of her. Because of this, the reader is aware of the extent of the girl’s abuse. The speaker utilizes an intriguing simile as she announces: “Her good nature wore out / like a fan belt” (15-16). The maturity of the speaker’s word choice becomes evident as she uses a simile a young reader would not understand. This keeps the mature reader focused and allows him to fully understand the somberness of this poem. The speaker concludes the poem as she depicts the teenage girl’s appearance at her funeral: “In the casket displayed on satin she lay / with the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on” (19-20). The speaker elects not to describe the dead girl in an unclear and ingenuous manner. Rather, she is very clear and
The author skillfully uses literary techniques to convey his purpose of giving life to a man on an extraordinary path that led to his eventual demise and truthfully telling the somber story of Christopher McCandless. Krakauer enhances the story by using irony to establish Chris’s unique personality. The author also uses Characterization the give details about Chris’s lifestyle and his choices that affect his journey. Another literary element Krakauer uses is theme. The many themes in the story attract a diverse audience. Krakauer’s telling is world famous for being the truest, and most heart-felt account of Christopher McCandless’s life. The use of literary techniques including irony, characterization and theme help convey the authors purpose and enhance Into The Wild.
James Hurst is the author of the heart breaking short story entitled “The Scarlet Ibis”. “The Scarlet Ibis” is a short story about two brothers; one brother is healthy, while the other is physically handicapped. The short story is centered on the idea that the older, healthier brother’s selfishness and pride ultimately led to the death of his younger brother, Doodle. Numerous quotes throughout the story demonstrate Hurst’s use of symbolism and foreshadowing to portray and predict Doodle’s untimely and heartbreaking death.
In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations which leads to a large conflict between the narrator and her mother.