Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Blankets by Josh McNeely

The illustration of Blankets is very artistic and cartoonish. Craig Thompson does something interesting with the illustration of people. The younger he is in the story, the more cartoonish the drawings become. The older Craig is the more realistic the art work becomes. This gives off the impression that as time moves further the more obscure the memories become. Though the pictures while he is in his high school career are more realistic in the portrayal of characters, the art work begins to become much more artistic. This is meant to add to the emotions Craig is feeling while he is with Raina. For example on page 306 he sees Raina in her nightgown and views her as an angel, in this atmosphere of beauty swirling around her.
What this story does is it tells you the story of how Craig feels and falls in love with Raina, and allows the artwork to compliment it in a manor with shows degree of a situation not just showing how the situation is unfolding, remember the example from page 306. This complimenting factor is not possible in a movie or novel format. You would miss out on Blankets ability to make you feel the emotions of the characters are experiencing, both the exaggerated emotions (when he is a kid), and the more artistic unique emotions he feels in high school.
The story has some interesting narration going on. This is a story that he narrates from a further point in time then when the story begins. At times we find him narrating as an adult about being in high school where he tells a story about when he was a kid. Also, due to the exaggeration of the artwork, Craig seems to be untrustworthy in what he see's, and say's. On page 16, His dad opens up a sleeping crate that has teeth; obviously, there were no teeth, but it shows that how he saw things as a child is not necessary how they happened.
The most significant scene, in my opinion, is on page 506. We see Craig walking through a field that has lost all of the snow, but he is remembering what the field looked like with snow. Right before this in the story we see him getting a call from Raina, telling him that she cant handle a commitment right now. Because of this he starts seeing the world change. The love he has for Raina is changing, she's changing, and there is nothing Craig can do about it. This scene on 506, shows that he is faced with a situation in nature that has now changed form what he thought of as beautiful. He wants things to stay the same, but he cannot keep things from changing. This scene is a metaphor for his relationship with his brother, his relationship with Raina, and his faith. It shows how time reveals the things we may not want to see but we will eventually see. Craig eventually grows apart from his brother, he eventually breaks up with Raina, and he eventually cant keep turning from the fact that the dogma of the christian faith is ridiculous. All of these things can be used as metaphors for this scene, which is why I think it is a really significant scene.

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