“Passing Before Life’s Very Eyes” was a slightly confusing graphic novel upon the first reading. Once you understand the concept and everything that is going on you begin to realize that this is a very deep and existential. It is essentially a story of an old man on his death bed and his experiences as he slowly fades from conciseness. Wolfgang makes great use of his words and images to appeal to the pathos of his readers throughout the comic.
He starts by making you feel sorry for the old man by showing him alone in a hospital bed with his eyes closed. This connects the reader to the man emotionally by showing his sad situation. You then see the “spirit” of the old man leave his body and go through various past memories of his life. The author appeals to the pathos by showing that the old man had a very fulfilling and joyful life. Wolfgang does this by showing happy and warm scenes such as the old man reading stories to his grandchildren, walking with his wife, playing catch, getting married, and so on. He meets himself as a young boy and his younger self begins to explain what is happening.
Near the end the images make you feel bad for him as you can see he is losing his mind. He begins to talk to himself as a young boy, each frame is wildly different and random compared to the last one and are filled with him in different forms. This tells the audience that he is nearing death, as random memories dominate his thoughts. The final words and page apply very strongly to the pathos. When he asks his younger self what happens after death he replies “More than likely, things just sort of-“ and the next page is blank. The reader is left not feeling sorry for the old man because of death but instead knows that the old man lead a great life and dies in a very content, painless way. I found “Passing Before Life’s Very Eyes” to be an entertaining, interesting and rhetorically sound piece.
2 comments:
Yes I agree that this piece was confusing the first time but once you read it a second and third time the message seemed more clear. At the beginning that the reader felt sorry for the man, but as the time went on you saw he had a great and fulfilled life. This was a different piece and it was nice to have something else to look at other than stories.
I just had to say that I love how you included a "light at the end of the tunnel" image in your post. Awesome. Naturally, I thought your post was good as well. Thanks for showing some creativity!
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