Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Gemma Bovery by Amria Norman

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      The illustration has a lot of detail, it’s realistic but it’s also kind of cartoonish because some of the expressions are overdone. I enjoyed the artwork more than the book itself I feel like it’s fitting to the story. There are a few time when she shows the story better than the words tell it.
2
          This felt like more of a children’s book to me. It could’ve worked just as well as a short story. Although the images added to the story the story had a lot of words and wasn’t like the traditional graphic novel. I feel like the expressions on Gemma’s face had to be shown in images. Otherwise we probably wouldn’t picture her the same throughout the story.

3.      The narration is by one person, Raymond Joubert. He’s reading Gemma’s journals as he is also talking about his life parallel to what was happening in Gemma’s. There are a few times when we see her journal entries, the font changes and we know that it’s straight from her. With him doing the parallel thing it really shows his character and how much he was obsessed with Gemma. I found it creepy in some parts. There was a section of him thinking about her while she was being intimate and he made the comment that the idea pleased him, it was something along those lines. If he wasn’t telling the story we would just get her journals and that wouldn’t add anything to the story, readers would probably lose interest.


4.      The frames of Gemma’s face on pages 36 and 37 represent her very well. She is always making this face, because she is never happy unless she is with someone she is having an affair with. These two pictures of her are on pages right next to each other. The one on left was her expression whenever the house they lived in was old and they found a new leak she was unhappy with her life with her husband. The next one on the right side she was unhappy with some of her “friends” that she had. She was daydreaming about what she wanted at that time. The frame of her thinking back on her affair on page 54 makes her smile. She was thinking about it at the end of her dinner party, but the affair had happened for the first time earlier that day. She had been with her husband for years and when she thought about him he disgusted her and her memories were never nice, but her thinking about this guy she met only hours before made her happy. I just found that comical and the illustrations made it work well for me. The pictures of Charlie on page 40 described him very well as well. He was oblivious to his wife’s unhappiness and her affairs. He always had the dorky grin. This passage is when Gemma is griping about things she didn’t like in her life. Charlie was number 5 on the list. I thought the illustrations were interesting because she didn’t like him yet he still looked happy and didn’t care about anything his wife was going through. The picture at the bottom of page 44 of Raymond Joubert when he was watching her stood out to me as well. During this part he was reading about her day in her journal and he was remembering his own memories of her that day. He was seriously obsessed with her and everything she did. He was creepy throughout the story but at this point the audience got to see him looking at her walk through town. It made me think about everything else he might’ve done that he didn’t fess up about.

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