Alpha Abidjan-Gare Du Nord Character Analysis

Every day, thousands of African migrants take the path towards a land of exile, seeking a better life in a continent full of dreams: Europe. Alpha Abidjan-Gare du Nord is a graphic novel published in 2014 written by Bessora and illustrated by Barroux. This quite unique duo created Alpha Abidjan-Gare du Nord, a migrant narrative deeply entrenched in the actual context of immigration waves from Western Africa to Europe as the cartoon takes the form of an autobiographical fiction in which Alpha tells us his journey from Abidjan to Paris. Bessora is a Swiss-Gabonese author, who is mostly known for her novel Cueillez-moi, jolis Messieur… for which she received the Grand prix littéraire d’Afrique Noir. Barroux designed the illustrations, the French illustrator is well known in the world of independent cartoon for his drawing-style influenced by naïve art. On an impressive diversity of aspects this graphic novel gives us a matchless insight of the condition of African migrants taking the journey to Europe. Thus, it can be noticed that various themes represented by characters arise from this narrative that is told

Alpha is a young Ivorian man whose wife and child have immigrated to France in order to settle in Paris, Gare du Nord. Alpha is fed up with waiting for news of them, so he decides to go himself to Paris and leave his former life in Ivory Coast. He only has one piece of information: he knows that his family should have settled in Gare du Nord, where his wife found a job in a barbershop. During this long journey Alpha encounters different characters such as Augustin, Antoine or Abebi, who have the same continent in mind: Europe. The text is written in the point of view of Alpha. Regarding the omnipresence of the “I” we understand that this graphic novel is also an autobiographical fiction. So the fact that the authors chose to use the point of view of Alpha makes the novel livelier when addressing the journey of