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.