Since the dawn of humankind, historians are trying to piece out the gaps in history and explain how we got here based on the events of the past. Surprisingly, historian David Christian, author of This Fleeting World, summed up the astonishments and confusions of humanity in 113 pages. This short book, about world history, tells us about the prequel of the Universe (first 14 billion years of the earth without humans) to the modern era in history (how we are today). David’s goal is to provide an easy understanding of world history for students. What to expect in this enticing book?
In his essay, McCloud presents several examples of how words and pictures work together. He starts off his essay by depicting a kid showing off his robot. The kid speaks and at the same time, shows off his robot to help the people understand what he is trying to say. McCloud then comes in to tell the audience that words and pictures come together in comics. McCloud’s message however, is more than just understanding what is happening in a book.
Fun Home is a graphic novel containing both comedy and tragedy portraying the childhood of the author, Alison Bechdel. Each panel and detail in her book was carefully drawn out and created with precision. Every emotion expressed, color used, and word said was drawn in for a reason Bechdel had in mind. Making everything in her graphic novel intertwine with one another, colors match with characters and emotions mixed in with the setting. If any part were to be altered or removed, several panels would not convey the same sentiment, therefore affecting a whole chapter and consequently, the tragicomedy itself.
The images in the book are pale pastel colours which is easy on target audience which is young kids. The language used in
Every page is ingeniously composed to help tell this unusual story, and
Though a wide range of ages can enjoy the book through Scieska’s story and Smith’s illustrations, the author’s assumed audience is second or third-grade readers. The silliness in the stories content of this book will make the most sense if the young reader knows the original folktale.
Julia Alvarez, in her poem “’Poetry Makes Nothing Happen’?”, writes that poems do play a role in people’s lives. She supports her idea by using relateable examples of how poems might change someone’s life. Her first example is simple, poetry can entertain someone on long drives. This does not only aply to long dirves however, Alvarez uses this to show that poetry does not have to have a big influence on someone’s life, instead it can affect a person in the smallest of ways, such as entertainment. The second example describes poetry comforting someone after the loss of a loved one.
The market is saturated with memoirs written in prose. Alison Bechdel, however, puts a spin on the dysfunctional family memoir in her graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. By using the graphic novel narrative form, Bechdel tells the tale of her family tragedy through words and graphic images. Fun Home tells the story of young Alison’s life of dysfunction with a father who is a closeted gay man, a family that lives in isolation and her own struggle with anxiety and OCD. The chapter “The Canary-Colored Caravan of Death” focuses on her father’s death by suicide, and her own isolation and mental struggles.
The uniqueness of this pages is Mariko’s words or lack of words illustrated by Jillian to create a visual narrative. This is a void of space with stark blackness and the white bubble with the words, “That was totally stupid” (133). The words jump out along with the light coming out of the school’s door and you see Skim and Katie’s gray shadow against the white snow. This illustration allows the viewer to see into the darkness of the night and of the frustration of the two girls. Jillian could have left the two-page spread all black, but on the left side, she adds three panels.
Already presented in 1970 by Ted Nelson in the essay “No More Teacher’s Dirty Looks” as a “hyper-medium” where “[t]he screen holds a comic strip (…) which branches on the student’s request (…)” [5], hypercomics are commonly associated with Scott McCloud’s notion of infinite canvas. This is, comics in a digital environment with no size limit or strict shape that can go in any direction. However, their main characteristic, as predicted by Nelson, is their relation with hypertextual fiction. Thus, hypercomics are usually web-based and combine comics’ language with a multi-cursal narrative structure that privileges text-reader interaction and where the reader’s choices determine both perspective and sequence of events and, therefore, their outcome.
• Historical Perspective of the Poem Most poem readers would take the poem at face-value, disregarding its poetic composition, rhyming and ideas asserted. According to Robert Frost, the poem was composed in just one night. The poem ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ was composed in 1922 and published in 1923 in ‘New Hampshire’ volume. After pulling off an all-nighter on his poem ‘New Hampshire’, he stepped outside in wee hours of the morning and had a sudden inspiration for the poem.
The black and white colour scheme was used to set the dark and melancholy tone as many individuals perished during this dreadful event. The author uses many transitional words to add cohesiveness to his comic. These includes: “suddenly…”, “After…”, “Later…”, “Seconds later…”, and “As they came..”. As the comic takes place during a war, it is generally considered as an action comic. There are many fighting scenes and jaw-dropping stunts, which screams the word action.
One way she uses panel design to make her novel successful is the absence of color. Satrapi’s use of comic panels makes the reader read and understand the memoir in a new and different way. The panel design is only black and white but the images depict the different colors of the revolution that are more clearly understood.
By using sophisticated storytelling techniques, Hasan Minhaj is able to effectively convey his experiences about fear. Amy Tan’s Fish Cheeks is also a moving story. Tan expresses the idea that people in general have difficulty being proud of their backgrounds when they feel that they won’t be accepted. She uses imagery and situational irony to relate to the reader.
Artistic expression is the creative manifestation of an artist’s thoughts and feelings. Wisława Szymborska’s poetry states much about what artistic expression is, and how to qualify, and value it, and the importance of breaking from restriction in terms of how critics, whether self-critics or otherwise, evaluate creative expression itself. In The Joy of Writing, she explores the act of writing itself and the power and freedom of artistic expression. Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem is a satire of a critic’s review of a poem. Szymborska demonstrates the fallacies and absurdities associated with judging the quality, cause and meaning of artistic expression, such as poetry.
