Blankets_Response_Paper

Response Paper Blankets The page I chose to analyze the parent son relationship was right at the beginning on page 15 in blankets. This is where his dad came upstairs to separate the boys by making one of them sleep in the cubby hole. I am first going to start with the most overall things that need to be pointed out and then from there I will work deeper and pick out little things in the illustration. A big idea that is blatantly obvious is the size of the dad compared to the boys. He is massive. Craig Thompson shows how powerless and inferior he saw himself to his dad as a kid. He illustrates his dad as a big guy but something just doesn’t seem right. I think Craig Thompson takes it one step further and not only does he see his dad as big and powerful he also sees him as sort of a monster. He really doesn’t give him the human features like he does in all his other characters. He looks bulky but not muscular, just big and scary looking. I think Craig purposefully didn’t make his dad look human because he did not see him as someone he wanted as a role model or grow up being like. Another really easy to see thing is his dad’s face. He has no expression. Craig does not give his Dad a mouth or eyes. His face is just a stern and expressionless. Just by doing this it is obvious there was a huge disconnect from his dad being a regular father figure as a kid. He does not see his dad as a friend or someone he could talk to or do things with. His dad has no eyes and no mouth on purpose. He was just someone to punish them for doing things wrong. This is made evident in the book as you read on. Something else I noticed was the way he drew his dad dragging and pulling the brother off of the bed. He even has one picture of his dad completely holding the son by the shirt in the air. This is showing that his dad used a lot of physical force to get them to do stuff. He did not negotiate or tell them to do something. He just goes ahead and grabs and yanks them to do what he wants them to do. On page 15 there is a panel of his dad’s hands. As I really started looking at this picture I noticed that the hands are drawn very menacingly. He his dad’s fingers are curled and sharp looking almost like claws. He probably is very scared of his dads hands and could not bring himself to draw them like Gods tools. This fits right in with the idea of Craig seeing his dad as not human but a monster. There is really no feature given to his Dad that looks caring or filled with redemption. Another thing Craig does is always show his dads shadow. I really could not figure a definite reason why he does this but I speculate that it has something to do with a shadow being dark and scary. Shadows are not known for their fun loving and joyful traits. Shadows usually are associated with the dark and evil. That’s the way he saw what his father was doing. Apparently Craig really did not like the fact that his dad separated them and put his brother in the dark scary cubby hole. I would even go as far to say that not only did he see his dad as not a father figure but he also saw his dad as mean and careless.