The article "The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis" by Hillary Chute is an analysis of a graphic narrative that follows the life of an Iranian girl during the Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. Chute talks about how different pictures in the graphic novel represent different emotions of the author. For example, "[the use of] spacing within the pictorial frame [symbolizes] the disruption of her own characterological presence." Also, the narrative jumps from one time to another frequently to emphasize the drama involved with the story. In addition, the graphic narrative uses only black and white instead of color. This is because there is a vast amount of war and violence included in the narrative. Because war is becoming a "normal" part of life, the author believed that drawing in color would add to the normality of the situation. Black and white brings out a feeling of unusualness.
In reaction, I found Chute's article very interesting. The part of the article I found most intriguing was the fact that the author of the graphic narrative purposely used black and white as opposed to color to make war and violence jump out at the reader. Also interesting to me was the fact that the graphic novel contained an abundance of dead bodies and other obscene inclusions. This makes the story more realistic.
If I had to ask three questions, I would ask (1) why was the author inspired to do a graphic novel as opposed to a written memoir, (2) does the author think that a graphic novel is more powerful then a written memoir, and (3) does the author have any intentions of writing a written memoir to accompany this graphic novel.
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2 comments:
I think that she may have chosen the graphic novel because of the graphic novels making you think of the details in that story which had been left out. Or perhapsit is so people can get a visual representaion of what was happening if a person has no immagination at all.
I agree with Ed that Hillary Chute may have chosen the graphic novel because it does encourage the reader to picture details of the story that may have been left out otherwise. Also, it may aid others who have trouble forming a mental picture in their minds of the story that is taking place in the novel. In addition, I think Chute may have chosen to use pictures because it portrays a different kind of drama to the reader. An example of this is her use of black and white as opposed to color. Also, proximity and alignment are all present in graphic novels which is not so in plain text. This adds strong effects to the story.
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