Week 5: Blankets

This week we started delving into the world of the graphic novel. I decided to read Blankets by Craig Thompson. I had never heard of it prior to this class. Just looking at the cover, I got this impression that it was going to be this really beautiful and sentimental reading experience, and it was. I love Thompson's style. He draws everything with simple black and white lines, but the different line weight he uses throughout his drawings looks almost like he is using a brush, which adds this beauty and emphasizes the delicateness of his drawings.

The story was probably one of the most touching coming-of-age stories I have ever read. I felt like he intertwined religion and his own experience in a poetic way, incorporating passages from the bible with illustrations of what he was doing in the real world. And sometimes intertwining unworldly religious imagery with him in the real world depending on how much his faith was affecting him at the time. I grew up in a nonsecular household, so the pressure that Thompson was under with such a devout family and the amount he looked to his faith was not something I completely understood. I worried that this would affect my understanding of the rest of the novel, considering how much it was an integral part of Thompson's life. But he illustrated and presented this aspect of his life in such a clear way...I didn't have to know anything about Christianity to understand his conflicts and struggles.

Thompson is remarkable at subtle and sensitive storytelling. While there are many excellent moments, the one that impacted me the most was how he talked about him and his brother's sexual abuse by their babysitter. In the very beginning, I remember this drawing of his brother. You had no idea of what context his brother was in, just a boy holding hands with some adult and looking back at Thompson. But the way Thompson drew his brother, with these unsettling big black pit eyes, had really hit me. I had no idea why, but just looking at the drawing made me uncomfortable, and I knew something was awry. When I had got to the point in the book where Thompson actually talks about the abuse, you saw the exact same drawing again, only this time you knew the context. I was so moved in that moment; how Thompson was able to foreshadow this dark part of the story simply by drawing two larger-than-normal black circles for eyes.