Persepolis and Epileptic

Persepolis is a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi that portrays a story of a youg teenage girl.
What part of the graphic novel gives the example of White's definition of the way people tell a story? White discusses that there are ways people tell a story. They can choose to leave stuff out in their story.

There is an example of White's idea of how a story is told, on page 12 in Persepolis. It is an example of how a person can see how society sees a certain event going on in life and misunderstand what they might believe due to outside influence telling a story to someone else. Because of this, "Marji"realizes that she does not understand what is really going on in her country. She is in a room full of older people talking about the king and how he is a killer. They are all laughing and she does not know what to do. She then laughs awkwardly and alone. The last part of the panel, she is saying to herself that she does not know anything and that she must read to understand.

Persepolis is a story that the writer Satrapi actually lived and wanted to portray her experiences living in Iran. Because the story is a first person account of what she experienced, Satrapi can choose to leave things out of the story. She could have even have left things out subconsciously, knowing that it would not work well with the way she wanted her story to go. White explains that people tell stories like this to make sure they get their point across without outside opinions/facts misleading the story.

Sleepwalk and Time

Is time fast or slow throughout Sleepwalk, by Adrian Tomine?

Sleepwalk, by Adrian Tomine, is decieving.
The book is broken up into smaller short-comic-stories that seem to make the read fast.
But, if you look further into the stories and the depiction of time throughout each story, time is slow.
There is a beginning, middle, end. There are flashbacks that bring us back in time farther then the present story at hand.
McCloud discusses how a rope can be used to explain the time use in a comic.
He says, every inch on a rope represents every second in time on a comic panel (96).
Each panel is a different part of time.

Does Sleepwalk use McClouds use of time in a reasonable manner?

Sleepwalk does this but the rope is shorter and and the time is more spread out with each panel and with each story.
It bring more time into a shorter story. It allows the reader to understand what is going on and to also have an imaginaiton of the time in between and what is happening during that time we do not see as a reader.

V for Vendetta and McCloud

Is V's mask in V for Vendetta really how he see's himself?

McCloud suggests, "We see ourselves in everything. We assign identities and emotions where none exist. And we make the world over in our image" (McCloud,33).
The images given in McCloud on this page are the front of a car, the top of a Kraft parmesan cheese, and a simple circle, two dots, and a line as a smilie face.
These images all represent how we as human see ourselves in everything.

V chose the Mask he wears as a symbol of who he see's himself as.
The mask itself represents a man from the past who blew up Parliment, who wore the same mask when he did. The man was an anarchist.
V uses the mask to represent not the man who blew up Parliment but uses the mask as a symbol of change.

Does V see himself in the mask as an anarchist then?

According to McCloud, the answer would be Yes.
McCloud says, "You know you smiled because you trusted this mask called your face to respond. But the face you see in your mind is not the same as others see!"
I would say Yes as well. You see in V for Vendetta, what he sees himself as.
V speaks with "Lady Justice", a statue and how he sees her and what represents.
He says, "The flames of freedom. How Lovely. How Just. Ahh, my Precious Anarchy." He says this after blowing up "Lady Justice", while he is wearing the Mask. He then says, "O beauty, 'til now I never knew thee".
This is where V acknowledges anarchy and his connection to it. While he wears the mask he is "V", and being "V" he therefore is an anarchist.

"Reality is the mask of meaning..."

What is Reality?

Art Spiegelman's  graphic novel "Maus" is a great example of Hayden White's statement that "reality is the mask of meaning..." White's statement can be looked as a way to explain that reality of an historic event can "mask" the actual meaning behind the purpose  of a piece of literature. "Maus" depicts the information of the Holocaust through a comic/graphic novel view. But I saw "Maus" as a graphic novel portraying the meaning of family.

What is Family?

The meaning of family can be different then the actual definition of "what is a family?".  This "reality" ,that White explains, "masks" the purpose of Spiegelman's "meaning" of family. Artie who interviews his father throughout "Maus" is a son searching for information of his "family" through his father. His mother killed herself and later in the novel Artie accuses his father of killing his mother. This was in a metaphoric manner because his father burned all of his mother's stuff. Instead of Artie disowning his father and rejecting his father...Artie gets a bit frustrated but in the end still respects him as he leaves. He waits to say to him self...."murderer". I believe that Artie does this because it is his father and in a way teaches us a society to respect your family and who is in it even when things are wrong in many ways. This an example of how "reality" can "mask" the meaning of purpose.