The Farm Worker and the Organizer

This form lends itself well to the portrayal of Working because it provides a stage for each individual character. I’ve seen the collection stories performed (but perhaps a high school play is not the best) but the graphic novel form forced me to focus on the words of the story as opposed to the character telling the story. In the theatrical format the individual person seemed more important, but the graphic novel focused on the representation of the person. Like McCloud discusses, portraying a character with less realistic futures allows the viewer to imagine them as many people. This seemed to be the case with Working- I could envision each narrative as applicable to many other workers because of their somewhat cartoonish representation. The blocks of text as opposed to dialogue bubbles also changed the reading of the graphic novel. Pure adaptation of another work seems more difficult for the form of the graphic novel. I’ve read the adaptations Working and Genesis now, both of which are text-heavy and focused more on narrative than dialogue. In the previous stories I’ve enjoyed the blend of reading one character’s perspectives then seeing perspectives of others through their dialogue bubbles. Pure adaptations seem to lack an important element of the graphic novel, in which there is a consistent blend of narrative and dialogue.

The individual stories vary so much because they are told by different characters and illustrated by different artists. Even the convention of the graphic novel form with fairly consistent frames differs in each story- some artists go outside the frame more often than not. My favorite two stories are from the farm worker and the organizer. I think both of these stories lend themselves to sequential storytelling, but not purely in order of events or natural order of time. Perhaps I also like the stories best simply because of the artists’ portrayal and style of drawing. This book also shows how much of an impact the artist has on the words of the story. All of these artists are clearly talented, though their portrayal of a character and their drawing style affected how I interpreted the character. In the case of the farm worker and organizer and a few others, perhaps I liked the stories because my perception of the character was the same as the artist. However, I could see, especially in the story of the proofreader and the securities broker, how my understanding of the character could change because of their representation. The proofreader is presented as a cartoonish man, perhaps someone who should not be taken seriously. The broker is presented in darkly shaded and conventional frames. I viewed him as a very conventional and somewhat boring man, and I attribute some of this to the drawing style alongside his own narrative, which also seems pretty ‘conventional.’ I don’t think the graphic novel form lends itself well to pure adaptations because it is augmenting the work of another, affecting how every word is seen. Though, I suppose this is an artistic process of interpreting another’s work, and could emphasize parts of the story a reader may not have ‘seen’ before.

Returning to the discussion of sequential storytelling, the stories of the farm worker and the organizer seem to progress through time with the most ease. I don’t think any story in the collection actually follows a time sequence where events follow one after another, and the story heads towards a conclusion at the ‘end’ of the time sequence. Instead the stories follow the sequence of a character’s thoughts about their lives and work. The story of the farm worker works well as a sequential story in graphic form because the reader can follow the storyteller as he travels, seeing what he describes. His story also contains many anecdotes. When portrayed pictorially, the anecdotes don’t seem out of place or out of sequence, instead they enhance the story because they provide small and informative diversions from the farm worker’s life story. Page nineteen through page twenty-one provide sequence in the form of his new realizations, where the conventional form of the frame is broken and even some photographs are introduced. The story of the organizer works sequentially because of the form the artist uses, where we are following the narrator through his own story. By watching the organizer tell his own story, we are on the sequence with the organizer, instead of seeing the action of his words portrayed. This emphasizes the importance of the organizer instead of following the action of his stories.