Category: Student Posts

I decided to do my essay primarily on how each other uses stories as a way to develop each conflict just as any author would with a character. At the same time I noticed how each other does this in diffrerent ways primarily due to how they use tone and complexity. To me I saw this as the authors mirroring the tone of the experiences they depict while also highlighting the simpler state of conflict in North Korea compared to Palestine. More or less I wrote this essay in one go. I like writing this way cause I think it makes my essays more fluid. What I tried to do with organization was set up what both authors do throughout and notice how they are similar and then go on to see how they approach that same method.

Writing this essay was a bit difficult for me. In my previous experience, I only had to worry about how the author used his text to express his idea. But in this case, I also had to worry about the art style. It is an odd feeling since I always considered the graphic novel as second-tier literature, but now it changed my mind. The art style of both books is vastly different. I believe that pictures increase the tool for the author to use in their novel. The result can vary. Each book had pros and cons in their way of displaying the texts and graphics. It was hard yet interesting experience since it was my first time writing a comparison essay/vignette about a graphic novel, but it felt fresh since it wasn’t a conventional novel.

Link to Essay: Essay Link

Both considered graphic journalism, Palestine and Pyongyang tell stories of lesser known realms impacted by political instability. Although both graphic novels, Palestine with a lot of detail and the more simple Pyongyang both bring readers deep into their text, immersing them into each individual short part, or vignette. Through exploration of these texts, I wrote about how both stories impacted me as a reader, through both the complex and plain styles. Writing my essay was a challenge at first. I was scared to write about my own thoughts, as I learned early in my english career not to rely heavily on first person opinion. However, after being reassured that it was okay, I went forth with my ideas, while still staying fair to the authors of both texts. I wrote from the heart, scratching out drafts that were in the poor compare and contrast style I learned in middle school. I tried to shy away from that style and think I did better but I am still unsure. Of all of the things we have written in this class, I feel as though this was the hardest for me as I struggled with finding things to discuss in my essay. I struggled with finding similarities, especially due to my struggle with reading Palestine. I think I finally came up with a good argument and executed my essay the way I felt was necessary due to my experience with the texts.

Image taken by me

The main idea of my essay is that although Pyongyang and Palestine are graphic novels composed of many vignettes which strong together to form a narrative, the two books are different. The illustration style, use of text and narration and the way the vignettes coalesce into one narrative vary, Pyongyang’s felt to me, what I described as, like Purgatory whereas Palestine felt very real and journalistic and chaotic.

Coming up with the argument was not that hard for me. After Professor Morgen said that we should write about something that we didn’t fully understand when comparing the two books, I immediately thought of something that had been on my mind for a while: why did the two books give off such different vibes? I went back to my room that day and without thinking too much quickly had a basic outline on paper. It didn’t take too long to put sentences in and pretty soon the essay was finished. The one problem I had was defining what I meant by “Purgatory”. I didn’t want to take up too much space explaining it but I had to describe it somehow. I’m not sure I did the best I could have but I think the idea got across.

You can access the essay here.

Writing this essay was. little more difficult than originally intended. I began by writing the “meat” of the essay, trying to organize my thoughts and decide on an overarching theme for my essay. I wrote the middle with ease, most of my ideas coming quickly and fluidly. The concluding section was by far the most difficult to write, as I took FOREVER to decide on what I though brought my whole project together coherently. Eventually I made a decision, and it all worked out pretty well.

The controlling idea of my essay is the similarities and differences from the vignettes in both Pyongyang and Palestine and an analysis on how they affect the reader and the books.  In order to start writing this assignment, I had to first lay out three ideas that I wanted to write about.  So, I decided to make three paragraphs-either two similarities and one difference or one similarity and one differences.  Then I settled on my three ideas.  I also wrote my thesis statement after I wrote my body paragraphs.  For me, this is uncommon.  This draft cannot be quantified because I wrote each paragraph individually, and then I edited each.  So, the “nth number” of draft is not sufficient to characterize hod I revised this piece.  A method I used was writing my notes on the top of my paper, and then following it while I wrote my paper.  Also, as aforementioned, I wrote the paragraphs separately like different prompts.  The organization broke down to five paragraphs: One introduction, two differences, one similarity, and a conclusion.  Overall, this project challenged me to further analyze both texts.  Surprisingly, I also had to analyze the pictures as well because they had the same amount of information.  Overall, I extracted more information from the comics from this essay.Comparing Palestine and Pyongyang

Palestine by Joe Sacco and Pyongyang by Guy Delisle are both journalistic graphic novels whose diegesis revolves around the portrayal of a foreign culture. In Sacco’s case, we get a brutal and uncensored retelling of the ongoing conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians. From Delisle, we get the humorous yet harrowing narrative of an animator’s trip to North Korea that explores the “hermit country” in a depth that is rarely seen in any form of media. Both Sacco and Delisle considered how their art style, tone, and moments selected would affect their story as well as their portrayal of foreign cultures and ended up creating works that land at extremely opposite ends of the graphic novel genre, yet serve a similar purpose through their use of vignettes. 

The most obvious aspect of the journalistic approach to graphic novel is the main feature of the genre: the art itself. And in their attempts to convey a different culture, Delisle and Sacco chose art styles that couldn’t be more different from one another. In Palestine, Sacco chooses to use a highly complex and detailed black and white lined style. At times, the art style itself can seem aggressive and over the top with so much happening on the page. Delisle, on the other hand, chooses a more simplistic art style that boils down to very basic shapes. He even describes himself as lazy in one panel where he refuses to draw cars because he feels like it would be too much work. 

This is in contrast to Sacco, who depicts every inch of war torn Palestine in painstaking detail. At times, the art itself seems to be assaulting the reader because it spills off the page and fills every inch of it. There is also a lot more text when compared to Pyongyang. Perhaps the most illustrative moment of this is an entire section that becomes a like a normal book with minimal pictures. Sacco goes into excruciating detail in this section, which is very much unlike any moment in Pyongyang. 

Pyongyang and Palestine also have extremely different tones overall. Pyongyang is a humorous but surprisingly realistic commentary on the state of the most secretive country on Earth, North Korea. Delisle often makes jokes at the expense of his North Korean counterparts and complains about how inept the North Korean animators are at understanding basic direction. In Palestine, Sacco restrains his judgement when telling the stories of the people, but will often comment from time to time. 

Palestine however features a more menacing and brooding tone in contrast to Pyongyang. In Palestine, it is expected that every man has been in an Israeli jail and if he hasn’t, then it is a matter of time till that happens, the conditions of which are horrible. In contrast, Pyongyang often uses the fact that people are taken to labor camps or disappear in North Korea as a running gag. 

But perhaps the most important similarity between the two texts is their choice of vignettes in order to explore the cultures and issues of foreign nations. Pyongyang’s choice of vignettes are used to show the absurdities and humor in the ways of North Korea. One of the most obvious vignettes is the trip to the museum. By showing the relationship that the supreme leader has with the rest of the world and how everyone holds him as a God. This is clearly a misconstrued idea perpetrated by the North Korean government, but North Koreans who visit the museum who have been brainwashed their entire life will fall for this. In fact, Delisle finds the museum so funny that when he enters the room with the statue of Kim Il-Sung, he has to restrain himself from laughing out loud because of the absurdity of bowing to a statue. 

In Palestine, the purpose of the vignettes is a journalistic approach to the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. The vignettes showcase the stories of Palestinians in their interactions with Israelis. The most harrowing stories are the ones that come out of Israeli jails. The scariest part about this is that every man has to go through this in Palestine, a rite of passage into manhood of sorts. The Israeli jails are run by a few bad apples that torture their prisoners and the stories that are given to Sacco describe the harsh reality of them. 

Although different in purposes, the vignettes in both Pyongyang and Palestine serve the higher purpose of building the characters and the world of both stories. In Pyongyang, the purpose of the vignettes is to explore the secretive country of North Korea and to build the attitude and tone that a foreigner has to the country. In Palestine, the purpose of the vignettes is to explore the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis at the civilian level, but also to show a foreigners perspective on the conflict. 

I was surprised to find that that writing the essay comparing Palestine and Pyongyang was actually not that difficult. Once I had my leading idea, it was pretty simple for me to just punch it out. The main focus of my essay is the relationship between the the usage of vignettes and the styles of the comics. I went through a couple different drafts with different ideas, which in the beginning were mostly focused on surface level differences and similarities between the two books. But on the version I submitted, I found the topic that was the most interesting to me, which in turn made it quite easy to write about.