The question that was posed by Joey intrigued me, and pushed me to think more critically about how illustrations can have diverse and lasting impacts beyond what might be expected. Before reading this post, the in-class discussions and readings crafted my thoughts on the matter, but Joey’s post furthered my understanding of why Marjane Satrapi might have chosen to express her story as a graphic novel. In this medium, her childhood has been portrayed as digestible and therefore relatable, whilst expressing higher level abstractions through the illustrations. Images have a power to speak to people in ways that words are not always able to express, even by the most profound of poets or educated of scholars. It is my experience, which I know is shared by many others, that no words can adequately express the dancing colours of a sunrise or the fading hues that layers of mountains take on along the horizon at sunset. Images, and in another form, illustrations allow the writer to express themselves where words may not do justice and allow for unique interpretation on the part of the reader. Joey contrasts the relationship of black and white throughout the novel to portray themes such as the dichotomy between good and evil. He credits Marjane Satrapi with using illustrations to create foreshadowing, insightfully proposing that, “the drawings have the ability to show the truth in the lives of and the circumstances in which the characters live”, which expanded my perception of what the drawings were capable of expressing.