The theme in my ASTU 100A is memory and trauma, and we have been and will be looking at novels and some graphic novels. We’ve recently read the graphic novels, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Safe Area Goražde by Joe Sacco which is a journalistic comic book- both are about historic conflicts. Satrapi shows to her readers about her experience of the Islamic Revolution in Iran as a child and Joe Sacco portrays the Bosnian War through the narrations of a first hand witness. I found it interesting when we compared them in class and their style, the authors have quite different approaches to how they show violence in their work.

This panel is from Persepolis, where Satrapi shows how her childhood memories of imagining someone cut into pieces were very simplified. The body is cut into very symmetrical “neat” pieces, aligned and the body seems hollow. Even the facial expression of this person seems almost cartoon-ish and therefore shows how limited her way of visualizing must’ve been because she was a child. However, Satrapi chose to portray these violent images according to her childhood ways of picturing instead of taking a more realistic approach like Sacco does.

On the other hand, Joe Sacco’s drawings report in much more vivid and explicit detail even though he didn’t experience the trauma first hand. And it wasn’t just his drawing but also the language used in the speech balloons and captions, that were very unfiltered and realistic compared to Satrapi’s use of language and portrayal used in Persepolis.

In conclusion, what I realized from discussing this topic in class and thinking about it myself is that different authors can choose to take very different approaches to similar matters because their intention of how they make their readers feel, think and react differ. Prior to reading Safe Area Goražde in class, I had read Persepolis twice and it was the only graphic novel I had read that shows violence. Therefore, reading Safe Area Goražde and analyzing Sacco’s style in it changed my perception about graphic novels and the different styles of portrayal is used by authors of graphic novels.

Sania S.