Blankets, a graphic novel
I bought the autobiographical graphic novel Blankets by Craig Thompson after a discussion on the PCCboard forum. At 592 pages it's the longest graphic novel published in the U.S. I enjoyed it! If anybody wants to borrow it let me know. Pastor Garry (who some of you may know from his comments to this livejournal) is an occasional reader of comic books (and one of the closet Fen in my opinion) so he had read it. Or, skimmed it perhaps. He thought the author was saying "Christianity is bad 'cuz it wouldn't let me sleep with my girlfriend."
I was pleased that it's not at all what the Reverend suggests. The book is not about religion, it's about obsessive infatuation, represented by the blanket of snow that covers the land. This symbolizes the way it seems to the protagonist like the world is all of one piece -- as if it is all about one thing over which he obsesses, like so many teens do. The book chronicles his experiences of growing out of his two main interests, a girl and a religion.
He does not leave his religion because of the bible telling him he can't have sex. On the contrary, that conflict resolves itself with religiosity stronger than ever: at that point you can see how his two obsessions are starting to become one and the same thing in his psychology, as his sex drive seems to him like a sanctified act of worship for god's creation. His break with religion is not sudden and doesn't take place in a crisis of bad events. His relationship with the girl has been long ago resolved by that time. As the snow melts and reveals the world to be composed of many interesting and worthy things that no longer revolve around the girl, he begins to see how she was not as all-important as he had thought. So then he realizes (through visual metaphor, without the book having to state it in words) that the same is true of his religion. People just don't see the flaws in that which they are infatuated with, and they continue not to see it when it's pointed out. But one day the protagonist seems to come to the end of his teenage years and enter a calm, un-infatuated condition. So after this, there only need to be a few pages of critique for his actual doctrines. This part of the story briefly critiquing Christianity is part of the denoument rather than the climax of the book, because to the protagonist, it's no longer important.
I was pleased that it's not at all what the Reverend suggests. The book is not about religion, it's about obsessive infatuation, represented by the blanket of snow that covers the land. This symbolizes the way it seems to the protagonist like the world is all of one piece -- as if it is all about one thing over which he obsesses, like so many teens do. The book chronicles his experiences of growing out of his two main interests, a girl and a religion.
He does not leave his religion because of the bible telling him he can't have sex. On the contrary, that conflict resolves itself with religiosity stronger than ever: at that point you can see how his two obsessions are starting to become one and the same thing in his psychology, as his sex drive seems to him like a sanctified act of worship for god's creation. His break with religion is not sudden and doesn't take place in a crisis of bad events. His relationship with the girl has been long ago resolved by that time. As the snow melts and reveals the world to be composed of many interesting and worthy things that no longer revolve around the girl, he begins to see how she was not as all-important as he had thought. So then he realizes (through visual metaphor, without the book having to state it in words) that the same is true of his religion. People just don't see the flaws in that which they are infatuated with, and they continue not to see it when it's pointed out. But one day the protagonist seems to come to the end of his teenage years and enter a calm, un-infatuated condition. So after this, there only need to be a few pages of critique for his actual doctrines. This part of the story briefly critiquing Christianity is part of the denoument rather than the climax of the book, because to the protagonist, it's no longer important.