In our ASTU class lately, we read and discussed Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco, a graphic novel about the war in Eastern Bosnia from 1992-1995. In it, Sacco employs a number of elements to allow the reader to empathize and emotionally connect with the characters in the book. This blog entry will specifically explore his use of a realistic art style and highly developed characters.
Joe Sacco uses a realistic art style to create an emotional connection between the reader and the characters in Safe Area Gorazde. The realism used by Sacco is exemplified throughout the book, but is exceptionally visible with the images of victims of war (181), the image of Edin’s farm (33), and the image of the devastated town (132). The exceptional level of detail and attention to perspective that these images demonstrate show how Sacco allows the reader to realize that these events happened, and that the places exist. In presenting his book in this way, Sacco intends the reader to involve themselves completely in the lives and stories of his characters, a main focus in his writing the book.
Sacco also establishes this connection between the reader and the novel by creating complex and well-developed characters. Edin frequently narrates past events (18), (133), (162), has a relatively complete backstory (88), and because of this is presented as much more than a faceless victim of conflict, but rather as a human being with a story. The story of the Bosnian War is contained by him, not the other way around. In establishing characters in this way, Sacco demonstrates how the focus of journalism and wartime reporting should be on the humans involved in the conflict, not the conflict itself. Even the corpses of Edin’s friends “Senad” and “Rofa” (93) are given stories, shown to have “gone to school” with Edin for “12 years” (93). By granting these even these lifeless bodies personalities and personal lives, Sacco grants recognition and permanence to the individual tragedies of the war, and simultaneously brings the reader even closer to the victims of conflict.
In order to allow the reader to empathize and emotionally connect with the characters and narrative of the Bosnian War, Sacco utilizes a realistic art style and well developed characters. This allowed the reader to see themselves in the locations and even the stories of Edin, Riki, and the war in general, and to shift their focus from the impersonal aspects of the war to the specific, individual stories of the many victims of the tragedy.