How “The Impostor’s Daughter” teaches about Father/Daughter Relationships

Children will often follow by example. Due to this, more than likely a daughter will be influenced by their father as they grow up. In “The Impostor’s Daughter”, by Laurie Sandell, the graphic novel focuses heavily on a close father/daughter relationship, along with how the narrator’s life was impacted as she grew up. Through the book, it is easy to see that how a daughter’s relationship with her father will influence what she does and how she acts around other males outside of the family.

The story begins with Sandell being a young girl and just being awed by her father’s larger than life personality. She was the closest to her father between her and her two sisters. Naturally for that reason, she was a daddy’s girl, and of course, she had a stronger relationship with him than her sisters did.

Sandell was favorited by her father.

As the book goes on, the reader starts to notice how overbearing and controlling Sandell’s father can be, not to mention his compulsive behavior that drives his actions, such as making up names, places where he worked, and what his job was. Later, Sandell finds out that her father isn’t really who he says he is, constantly lying about his life and just being a destructive person overall. So, she eventually plans to investigate his life and what else he had lied about, leading to her publishing a book without his knowledge, causing a strain in their relationship, when Sandell becomes an adult.

Of course, due to Sandell being close with her father, that is a huge factor into how her social relationships outside of the family were formed. It has been shown before that a father who is involved with their daughter at a young age will have an affect on them as they grow up.

Latoya Newman in her article, “The Effects of a Poor Father-Daughter Relationship”, talks about the idea of how important father/daughter relationships are to a daughter’s growth and her family life. From the book, Sandell at a young age has a close relationship with her father, and the reader can tell how important he is to her. But, as stated previously, the two begin to grow distant, and in return, their relationship is strained. Newman mentions the idea of how having a poor relationship with a father can lead to his daughter having bad intimate relationships in their future (Latoya Newman).

Through her research, Newman found that “women who have poor relationships with their fathers are more than likely to choose mates whose personality and characteristics differ widely from their fathers” (Newman). Sandell doesn’t chose bad partners, per say, but she does find it hard to connect with them. Due to her upbringing and with her constant lying from her father, she’s not sure what a healthy relationship with another man is supposed to be like, which is why she is pushing away her long-term boyfriend, Ben.

Sandell and her boyfriend, Ben.

Sandell had met Ben through online and considered herself to be happy with him at the start of their relationship. But slowly, she was realizing she was unsure of what she wanted. Sandell enjoyed the time she spent with Ben, but it didn’t meant she was ‘in love’ with Ben. It plays into the idea of how her upbringing with her father was, and she cannot connect with another man due to this. She even questioned her relationship with Ben saying, “was it possible I wasn’t in love with Ben because he wasn’t enough like my dad? Charming...wildly...passionate...mercurial…” (Laurie Sandell 118). It didn’t seem like Sandell was finding happiness in Ben, but she wasn’t sure what happiness was supposed to be like, considering she never had a proper relationship with another person before.

How Sandell might not be in love with Ben.

Another effect that Newman mentions with having a poor father figure is the idea of communication. She quoted Linda Nielsen, author of “Between Fathers and Daughters: Enriching or Rebuilding Your Adult Relationship”, saying a lack of communication with a father plays into a female’s communication with another man (Newman). Sandell has bad communication skills with Ben at times throughout the book, constantly breaking their relationship on and off. She cannot seem to function without ambien in her system when she is spending time with Ben. If someone has to take a pill to function properly with another person, it can be safe to say that the relationship isn’t really healthy, if they have to rely on a pill to get them through.

As communication can suffer without having a positive father/daughter relationship, studies have shown that a lack of trust is created from a poor connection with a father and a daughter. Newman emphasized the idea of the lack of trust, stating “She (the daughter) may find it difficult to open up to other men and even to her own father for fear that she will be abandoned or disappointed again” (Newman). Sandell isn’t abandoned by her father, but she is disappointed by his actions and it creates a divide on their relationship. Though, before Ben, she could not talk about her father with other men. It was too hard on her to do so.

Perhaps, because Sandell was so used to the destructive nature of her father, she didn’t know what to expect with Ben. She didn’t know how to be in a normal, loving relationship. It didn’t seem right to her. It wasn’t real in some sense or another. It is easy to see that her father’s nature did have an impact on her and how she interacted with those outside of her family. Fathers can have a huge influence on their daughters and Sandell’s father obviously did. How she interacted with him as a child affected her as an adult.

Sandell's childhood also impacted her relationship with her father.

It is important to understand the idea of a father/daughter relationship at a young age and see the effects it can have on a woman as they grow up. The daughter will more than likely draw her own conclusions about men from her father, based on how her father acts. What a father says, what they do, and how they act around their daughter, will have a factor on their child as they grow up. Sandell was clearly influenced by her father. Fathers should be able to have a healthy relationship with their daughters. How they raise them will determine what they act around like other men in their life, so it is important for them to have the proper care for the right development.

Sources:

Sandell, Laurie. “The Impostor’s Daughter.” Back Bay Books. 2009. Print.

Newman, Latoya. “The Effects of a Poor Father-Daughter Relationship.” Our Everyday Life. https://oureverydaylife.com/effects-poor-fatherdaughter-relationship-37169.html. Accessed 28 Nov. 2017.

It Was the War of the Trenches

In this post I will share my thoughts and opinions on “It Was the War of the Trenches,” a haunting graphic novel by French author-illustrator, Jacques Tardi. Like many other graphic novels, “It Was the War of the Trenches” features multitudes of violence and gore. For some, violence is part of the appeal of graphic novels. In “It Was the War of the Trenches” however, violence is not glorified. Instead, violence is used to emphasize the importance of human life, and to portray horrors that Tardi believes can never be repeated.

To summarize the graphic novel, “It Was the War of the Trenches” is a story about French soldiers on the front lines of the first World War. It is a grim and dark depiction of the war. There are countless impact craters, barbed wire, mud, ruined countrysides, and corpses. There is  no main protagonist; each chapter revolves around a different soldier and the things they faced. Each chapter is non-chronological, which I thought was effective in that it takes away predictability, and focuses on the moments the soldiers die or face the ultimate tests of survival.  The only plots in the story that actually matter are in each respective chapter. This keeps things varied and interesting (in a morbid way). "It Was the War of the Trenches" functions like a collection of short stories, sharing the same setting of World War One.

Compositionally, the graphic novel has an interesting arrangement. Each chapter starts of with a block of text giving historical information about the war, and Tardi's personal opinions on them . Many of the pages are not split by many panels (three was the average I found), although there are some exceptions. A panel which I thought stood out from the others was on page 20. Here there is a boy who has taken a dead French soldier’s uniform. The boy charges across No-Man’s-Land and is killed by German soldiers. What I thought was most interesting about this scene was the contrasting inclusion of a skeleton with eyes in the middle panel. It’s as if death is directly staring at the reader; like it's telling them that no-one is invincible in life. Additionally, this is the only moment in the graphic novel where there is German being spoken. I thought this was because Tardi wanted to show that it was not just the French who felt afraid and guilty to kill. It was on all sides.

Artistically, Tardi draws many skeletons with their eyes intact, or the skeletons as having expressions. This could serve to give them relatable facial characteristics: that of anguish, agony, fear. Skeletons having eyes gives the story a touch of surrealism-- what did the soldiers see, what was just their nightmares?.

The story is full of moments of symbolic imagery, most notable that of religious icons. One which I thought was the most significant, was on page 32. Here a soldier kneels next to a statue of christ outdoors (In what was once a graveyard? It has certainly been ruined by the war) to pray. Jesus has fallen from the statue and has his arms stretched out towards the ground, and the base of the statue is riddled with bullet holes. As the soldier prays, he triggers a trap hidden in the mud, killing him. This is without a significant remark by Tardi. This shows a sort of "If there's a God why would he do this to us" mentality. The irony of dying while praying shows a very agnostic approach by the author towards religion.

Tardi uses violence as less of an entertainment medium and more of a storytelling element. Most of the violence in the story is based on shock-factor. There are moments where soldiers take bullets to the head, fall on the battlefield, or die from their wounds, but most of the gore comes from people and animals that are already dead. The massive amount of corpses that litter the pages of the story arguably is to make the reader feel uncomfortable. In doing so, Tardi shows that war (and the first World War in particular) should not be as romanticized as it should be. The arrangement of corpses in the pages is eerie and macabre, and I believe it is Tardi trying his hardest to get these horrors across to the reader.

Additionally in the foreword, Tardi mentions the purpose of the story. “This is not the history of the first World War told in comics form, but a non-chronological sequence of situations, lived by men who have been jerked around and dragged through the mud, clearly unhappy to find themselves in this place… Whose overarching desire is to return home.” I think this important in informing the reader on the purpose of the graphic novel, as not necessarily as an entertaining gore-fest but more of something that you have to put down every now and then and say “damn, that’s depressing.” Because “It Was the War of the Trenches” Is not a happy read. It should be approached the same way a book such as “Lord of the Flies” should be; a well-constructed, powerful example on the human condition and why we do what we do when the situation calls for it.

In conclusion, I believe Tardi's purpose in publishing "It Was the War of the Trenches" was to stress a desire for peace; that the millions of lives lost in the first World War in France and other nations have left a hole that has frankly affected us into the present day-- how many achievements and memories can never come to be because of the generations lost? We can never truly know this answer, but Tardi wants something as grand-scale and horrific, so anti-human, to never happen again. It is through the inclusion of violence and its advertisement to the reader that Tardi gets this message across.

Chicken With Plums

Gabrielle Stewart

10/20/2017

Blog Post 1

Chicken With Plums 

    Who would have ever thought that a graphic novel about someone wanting to die over an instrument could be so interesting? Well, Marjane Satrapi did just that in her graphic novel called Chicken with Plums. Satrapi is a graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director, and children’s book author. She was born in Iran to a middle class family. Her family was all very politically active and most of her books are about that point in her life. This particular novel about a man who gives up his life for music. Once his instrument gets permanently damaged, he decides that life isn’t worth living anymore. Not just for that reason, but for many. So I guess you could say he wanted to die for something he truly cared about, both his instrument and his family. As the book continues it tells the reader about the next eight days of his life after he makes this decision. The main character expresses his reasons for wanting to die through his experiences. These experiences are during his childhood, with his family, and things he describes that will occur in the future. During these experiences we can see his reactions as well as his thoughts can lead us to believe he wants to die for more reasons than just his instrument being broken.

   

    You first see Nasser Ali Khan and his wife's relationship on page ten. Here, you see an argument between the two about what they are going to do with their child when he makes his trip to get a new tar. We realize on this page that his wife is actually the reason for him needing a new tar, she is the one who broke it.  On page ten you can see their conversation in multiple panels. The first panel sounds like a regular conversation, but then quickly turns into an argument in the second panel. I found interesting how their child was in between them in many of the panels. The son seems almost not phased by them fighting which shows that it probably happens often in their house. It seems to be just a small argument until on the bottom of the page they call each other names. He says, “Bitch!” and she says, “Bastard!” That is where it draws the line and you can truly see how Khan is very unhappy. His wife is as well. This page as well as pages like twenty-four and forty-two show his relationship with his wife. From these pages, we can see that their relationship isn’t healthy and neither of them are happy. In many panels they call each other names and tell each other they hate one another. His wife is a huge part of his life, clearly, but as shown he doesn’t enjoy his time with her. This shows one reason his life isn’t worth living anymore.

    His relationship between himself and his children are also shown. Those too don’t seem to be that strong either. On page twenty-four there is an interaction between Khan and his daughter that clearly shows their relationship. His daughter comes into the room in the first panel and wants to know what’s wrong with him. He doesn’t tell her, but thinks in his head “I just want to die”. She simply wants to play with her father, but he shows no interest in it at all. He blames it on “being tired”, but we can see that isn’t the case. On page fifty-one, it shows an interaction between his children and he is sitting and watching them. During this interaction he looks quite disappointed with his children’s choices, which was his son farting on him. He says, “I’m going to die and my son farts in my face...what a waste!” His one sentence right there shows his disappointment without even looking at his expressions. Then there was a side note that clearly states that he doesn’t like his son. His reasons are because his wife decided to have another child on her own and he had nothing in common with him. Most parents don’t say those things about their children and if they think it, they don’t admit it. This shows that his relationship with at least one of his children, if not both, is very weak.

    As well as encounters with his family when his kids were young, there is also flash forwards as well. On pages fifty-four through fifty-six it shows a flash forward to when his daughter is seventeen. They think his daughter has appendicitis because her stomach is in pain. They soon realize once they bring her to the emergency room that she is pregnant. None of them realized that had happened and they are all in complete shock. After these panels he again thinks, “I am dying and nobody cares”. With that panel he says “It was difficult to make out an 8-pound fetus in 400 pounds of meat.” Again, parents don’t normally think or say these things about their children. The readers probably wonder why he says all of these things about his family in the present and in the future, but I believe it is because he knows he is going to die. He thinks that no one cares that he is going to die, so he just says them. He is right, because his wife doesn’t care about his love for music. We saw this when she first broke his tar.

    Family is a big part of people's lives. In Kahn’s case, family isn’t. He is always fighting with his family and disappointed in them. Every time something happens with them, he always says, “I am dying and nobody cares.” This shows that he believes that no one cares he is about to die. For the most part he used music to get away from these things, which is why his tar was so important to him. So when this instrument was broken, he was also. Not only does this book show his love for music and his tar, but it shows his lack of family support.

Marvel 1602: The Season of Marvels

Blog Post 1: Marvel 1602

Neil Gaiman’s Marvel 1602 begins with a series of strange weather events all across Europe. These events have baffled the public and inspire a great amount of worry. These weather patterns are revealed to be caused by a rift in time that was created by the appearance of something called a “Forerunner” in the Americas 15 years before the start of the book. The appearance of the Forerunner has caused a displacement in when certain events in time are supposed to happen. The Watcher of Earth, Uatu, deems this premature era the “Season of Marvels” that is not supposed to begin until the 1960s— a displacement that will lead to the eventual implosion of the universe. These “Marvels,” or superheroes, include the Elizabethan equivalent of various 1960s Marvel characters, including Sir Nicholas Fury, Matthew Murdoch, the Four of the Fantastick, and many others. These Marvels are set into a backdrop of Elizabethan (and post-Elizabethan) society, with their personal character holding an importance that is greater than their heroic abilities. Along with the previously outlined heroes, a new race of superpowered beings called “witchbreeds” (or 1602’s “mutants”) have appeared and are being protected by their mentor, Carlos Javier.

Parallel to the story of the European characters, Virginia Dare and her blonde and blue-eyed Native American companion Rojhaz are journeying from the New World to England in order to request greater support for the Roanoke colony. If you are planning on reading this text, skip ahead to the next paragraph. After the death of Stephen Strange, who believed that Virginia Dare was the time-displaced Forerunner, it is revealed that Rojhaz is actually Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America. Rogers was transported to 1602 after being captured in a dystopian United States by the “President-For-Life.” This machine, which was intended to kill the Captain, created the rift in time— jump starting the “Season of Marvels” that Uatu spoke of earlier. This realization mandates that Steve Rogers be sent back through the rift in time, nullifying the splinted timeline where the Season of Marvels began prematurely. However, because of his time in the dystopian future (and potential brain damage), Rojhaz rejects a voluntary return. He intends to aid in the founding of the Americas, building them from the ground up to become something different from the dystopian world from where he came. Unbeknownst to Rogers but understood by Sir Nicholas Fury, the presence of Rojhaz in 1602 will lead to the destruction of the universe. This understanding inspires Fury to knock Rogers unconscious in order to carry him through the rift, sacrificing himself and saving the universe in the process.

Gaiman’s 1602 contains an interesting philosophy on the role and existence of heroes. It also introduces the concept of “The Season of Marvels,” or the natural response of man when introduced to great levels of strife. The existence of these heroes at a time they should not be needed is reflective of the unnatural dangers present in the book. The concepts of reality and time in the universe being shredded to pieces because of a rift when included in the far lower-stakes environment of Europe in 1602 results in this premature seasonal appearance. Comparing this to the real-life history of superheroes, we began to see their appearance around the time of World War II. This massively damaging worldwide event is terrifying in scale and required a (albeit fictional) social, political, and natural response from the people of Earth to combat it. In the case of the Marvel Universe, this came in the form of Captain America. The symbol of peace and freedom fighting against the Nazi regime is inspiring, the very idea of a superpowered human being saving the world is fantastic and incredible. Captain America, or The Forerunner, signifies the dawn of the Season of Marvels, as is reflected in both 1602 and the modern comic book era. The next step in this Season is in the introduction of the Fantastic Four (The Four of the Fantastick) and the X-Men (the witchbreed), two groups of superpowered individuals who are responsible for the protection of Earth.

For 1602, the closing of the rift signifies a time of peace, much like the end of World War II. In both historical periods, no singular global event reaches the same level of severity again, effectively leaving the Marvels to be purposeless. However, the downfall of the Season of Marvels is that each new powerful force of good requires an equally powerful force of evil to battle against it. As the Marvels grow more powerful, they require equally powerful forces of opposition (effectively giving the heroes a reason to exist to begin with). 1602 uses the birth of the witchbreed and the Fantastick to introduce the birth of “The Brotherhood of Those Who Will Inherit the Earth” (the Brotherhood of Mutants) and Doctor Doom. These villainous forces are both intended to require a seriousness akin to the start of the Season, and continue to grow stronger as the heroes grow stronger.

It cannot be determined at this time whether the current “Season of Marvels” will ever end. It can be assumed that there will always be a new writer with a new idea for a villainous force that needs to be stopped, simultaneously creating a new purpose for the Marvels. As time goes on, there will be new disasters and new real-life forces of evil to inspire. The question that remains, after analyzing this “Season of Marvels” is what will be the catalyst for the the next great era, or season, for humankind?

What is this blog?

This blog is created by the students in ENG 277: Studies in the Graphic Novel at the University at Maine at Farmington. In addition to the assigned readings in class, each student has picked a graphic novel for their semester-long research project. Throughout the semester, students will post their first impressions of the graphic novel, a textual analysis, an investigation of the graphic novel's historical and cultural context, a short video, and finally a reflection on their project. To find out which graphic novels students have chosen, see the list of pages on the right.