Week 3 Reading Response – Chloe Madigan

I found the combination of illustration with text in Nick Drnaso’s graphic novel Sabrina to be especially intriguing in that it allowed Drnaso to alter the emotional perception of a scene by deciding for example which aspects of a frame are not depicted with as much detail and which colors are used in a panel to portray feeling rather than just the naturally expected shading. In daily life, our psychological states determine which aspects of the sights we see around us should stand out in detail, be left unfocused on, and be perceived as dull or vibrant due to how our personal experiences and expectations shape the world around us, but Drnaso takes on our mind’s work in Sabrina by showing us scenes through the lens of his own perception. As Kat noted, Drnaso’s minimalistic illustration style does seem to speak to how the news should display the truth: “in a black-and-white manner.” In considering this, the final dream Calvin has in Sabrina particularly stood out to me. This dream is illustrated in black-and-white, potentially representative of the idea of truth, yet Sabrina’s murderer is presented as a masked figure whose words are merely repeated phrases from various characters throughout the graphic novel rearranged to create his voice during an imagined conversation with Calvin.  This concept of past voices of others, even of oneself as Calvin’s words are spoken by the dream attacker, falsely constructing a present “black-and-white” reality of the murderer’s identity, and in turn masking the potential for seeing any truth, stood out to me as a final marker for displaying the terrifying capability for false narratives to both become and conceal the truth.

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