Stitches: Section I

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One parallel I noticed prominently in this first section of Stitches was the recurring notion of individual expression, especially when this expression is stifled. In David Small's dysfunctional family, silence was pervasive. His mother was a quietly angry woman who showed little to no sympathy or affection for her children or her husband. His brother expressed himself via his drum set, and his father beat a punching bag. And yet David was notably without his own voice: all he did was get sick (19). On page 62, the drawings of David entering his imaginary world of art show his true form of expression that the rest of his family cannot permeate.

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I was perplexed by the ending of this section. After suffering the anger of both his mother and grandmother, he goes to bed in a room "close as a coffin." He then dreams that his grandfather carries his body through his daily routine and then places him in a coffin next to the furnace. What precisely does this scene represent? How does it sum up his trip to Indiana in an emotional aspect?

Journal

Small uses the spacing and placement of frames in order to (very effectively) convey the flow of the story and to place emphasis on specific points. For example, the 47th page contains a single borderless illustration of David and his brother falling into the metaphorical whirlpool of his mother's angry outbursts. This is representative of the beauty of a graphic novel: it is possible to literally show things instead of telling them.

Static imagery when used to convey a critically moving bit of information can be very powerful in both film and illustration.

Generally when an entire page is dedicated to a frame, it is one of these crucial moments. Giving a particular frame a more prominent position makes it more of an impact. Another example would be on pages 58 and 59 with the larger depictions of the children watching through the fence followed by smaller illustrations of David running away. The larger frames cause the reader to pause for longer and observe the drawing for a longer period of time, effectively setting the pacing for the scene being described.