Comparing March Book One And Two, By John Lewis And Andrew Aydin

There are many that would argue that a graphic novel has no place in a classroom because they are too graphic and violent. Some would argue that the content is for children who are too lazy to read a novel full of text. March Book One and Two, are Two of Three of the trilogy written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, while illustrated by Nate Powell. The Trilogy is about John Lewis life and the Civil rights movement that occurred between the years 1954 and 1968. The Civil Right movement consisted of African-Americans fighting for equal rights. Some of the most notable leaders during the Civil Rights Era were Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcom X….etc. all of who are mentioned in the first two books of March. March Part One, mostly focuses

One of the first instances, that this technique is demonstrated is when Lewis visits a nonviolent workshop hosted by Jim Lawson, as Jim Lawson speaks, Lewis becomes inspired and enlightened. Lewis than thinks “His words liberated me, I thought this is it…this is the way out” (Lewis & Nayden 1:78) (See Fig 1). These are the only words in the page, which indicates that there is a great importance in these words. He mentions that “this is the way out” and if we analyze the image the goes along with this text, it is an image of him looking up with solid black background. One would think that the black background indicates that there is a negative mood in this particular scene but if we observe the shading we see that his face is shaded as if there were light shining at his face. If we combine the text and image together it seems that Lewis is the light at the end of the tunnel. Of course there are times where the black background does indicate a negative

is speaking with Robert Kennedy and again the image of a phone is present during their conversation (See Figure 4). During the conversation Robert Kennedy is mentioning how the protester should just pay bail because if they are in jail they are just seen as criminals. King responds by saying “ its difficult to understand the position of the oppressed people, ours is a way out, creative moral and nonviolent”(Lewis and Nayden 2:95). As the phone is present King brings up the idea again that the they, the oppressed will not take the option to stop fighting peacefully, despite there are those who do not understand there