WEEK 5: Blankets by Craig Thompson Response

This week I greatly enjoyed reading Craig Thompson’s Blankets. I found this graphic novel to be an extremely elegant storytelling of childhood, first love, religion, and self-discovery. This novel really drew me into the story with it's simple beauty through the writing and illustrations. This graphic novel is different than ones I read before because of is deep personal nature. Thompson's storytelling makes the reader go through a roller coaster of emotions ranging from joy to pain as they follow the life and times of the character Craig. Readers are taken into a world that, though recognizable as our own, somehow seems more like a dream world than the harsh life we encounter on a day-to-day basis. There are a number of themes illustrated in Blankets, however, I was interested in his themes of first love and religious discovery. This theme has been common throughout history, but the one thing that sets Blankets  apart from other books is that it is able to draw love without words. The themes in Blankets are depicted through extremely detailed pictures and words alike. The loose writing and informal nature makes the serious topics this novel deals with more like a journal or diary. Thompson sometimes does not use any panels with his images and he lets his drawings float on the page without boundaries to give a liberated and free feel to the story. I observed that he also uses rough and jagged lines to portray fearful or traumatic stories. 

-Abigail