Journal Entry 1 :Stitches

In this section of the graphic novel Stitches, there is a lot of repetition in reference to language. Page 15, "Mama had her little cough...once or twice, some quiet sobbing, out of sight... or the slamming of cupboard doors. That was her language.(17) " " Dad, home from work, went down to the basement and thumped a punching bag. That was his language.-my brother, Ted, beat on his drum.(19)" "Getting sick, That was my language.". All of these "languages" are these peoples ways of expressing themselves wordlessly, I would also argue that David uses drawing as a language as another way of expressing himself. This family is not the type of family that talks openly about their emotions so they have to all channel their feelings in a different way that makes them all seem more distant and independent from one another because of it. A question that struck me while reading this segment regards to the scene with all of the fetuses (38). We see a lot of imagery of this exchange in eye contact between the two of him and I wonder if  David sees himself as being like the fetus, trapped in this jar, small and helpless. This leads me into my topic I wanted to focus on for this segment regarding words, or in this case:lack there of. The whole segment goes seven pages without any text, though text is not needed. There are a lot of parallel shots going between David and the fetus, shots that look nearly identical. One we see is a super close up of the eye of David next to another shot with the eye of the fetus. It is as if they are looking at each other and not being so different from one another. This is done again on the next page (40) the top right and left frames are identical in their positioning of the subjects to that of the bottom frames. The only difference is really that David is physically bigger and yet he is the one who is being "chased" by the fetus. What is he afraid of? The fetus does look a bit creepy and evil and the silence between the two of them is fantastic in that it almost feels like the moment is more intimate that David is feeling and this silent fear of his is very powerful.