Silence in Sitches

I was struck by the way Small uses visual pauses without dialogue and/or narration to heighten and break down the theme of silence throughout the book. Especially compared to a graphic novel like 'Fun Home' that compressed so much text and analysis into each page, the silences in this book stood out.

The story begins with six pages of silence. The images zoom in from industrial Detroit, to Small's house, up the stairs, to Small drawing on the floor as 6 year old to his mother washing dishes in the kitchen. The reader can gather clues about what is going on--the dreary colors, the factory smoke, the identical rows of streetlights, empty streets. We also know that we are entering a world that is muted.

The first sounds we hear are noises, rather than dialogue. They are the cough of his mother, her quiet sobbingm her violent slam of the cupbaords.  The weight of these sounds emphasizes the silence they are surrounded by. We see how each family member copes with the silence--his father punching his punching bag, his brother on the drums. From a visual persepctive, the build up of the silent, purely visual scenes makes these sounds and text feel jarring and tense. The reader also sees Small in contrast to his family. He is the only one whose 'language' is a quiet one--he gets sick.

The first speech bubble doesn't appear until page 21, and then not again until page 28. The slow buildup with little dialogue situates this story within a legacy of repressed silence. This makes Small's loss of his voice after surgery (182-183) all the more distressing. It puts him in line with his angry, repressed mother, his great-grandfather who destroyed his vocal chords with drano,  and a family who keeps big secrets hidden from eachother (cancer, sexual identity, insanity etc.). On page 101 Small's mother puts her hand over his mouth to keep him from calling his abusive grandmother 'crazy'. She is physically shutting him up, and the look of distress on her face in the bottom panel (perhaps the grandmother is walking past) indicates that she is passing down her own fear of being overheard.

The long 'silent' sections of the book without text serve multiple purposes. They slow down time, reveal the narrator's isolation, draw out an emotional response or slip into the surreal taking us inside Small's imagination.

One of the first of these sections is when the 6 year old Small explores the hospital by himself and discovers the creepy fetus in a jar (p 30-42). The pages without dialogue or narration highlight his alone-ness as well as the surreal, disturbing environment (check out the old man's expression on p 33). When he finds the fetus (38) the surreal element is hightened. Throughout the book, Small indicates the horror/imagination of the protagonist by using extreme angles and close ups. When the fetus gets out of the jar and chases him we see how alone he is in a world void of expression or understanding. The narrative transition into the imagination on page 62-3 as well when Small escapes the bullies and dives into his drawing into a cave of his own cartoon characters.

We see Small's terror at both being silent and of being too loud after he finds out he had cancer. He says "I was scared to go up to bed, afraid that the screaming in my head would be heard by my family" (217). There is no dialogue from page 202-223, heightening the emotional response he has to this revalation as well as his isolation. There is no text for the last half of this section. Small goes to sleep under a table in the living room and has an alice in wonderland-like dream. The multiple 'silent' pages  slow down time and highten the dream-like quality. In this scene, we see the stark contrast between the intensity of the thoughts/noise in his head and the intensity of the silence he is surrounded by.

Small also uses purely visual pages to amplify emotional weight after his therapist suggests his mother does not love him (p. 257-67) and after his dad confesses he gave him cancer (p 288-94). The reaction to his mother not loving him is extended (10 pages!) and mostly symbolic (tears/rain). The impact of this is impressed on the reader through this extended, silent visual metaphor. It seems as though lots of time has passed, although he is back at the therapists office in the next scene. Small is almost turning the oppressive silence that he grew up with on its head by utilizing it to illustrate profound emotional realizations. Or, he is reemphasizing that silence is the container for awareness in his family. The scene with his father is shorter, but indicates an even bigger silence/seperation after the father 'breaks the silence'.

The story ends with Small's adult dream of being a child stuck in a house.  The dream is silent, but the narrator's ability to chose not to follow his familial legacy of repression in the dream rejects that type of silence.

In this graphic novel, Small uses silence to express personal truth, emotion and family secrets, successfully employing the weapon of his childhood on itself.