Analysis Of Granted: War Brothers By Sharon E. Mckay

Survival is one of humanity’s greatest instincts. Sharon E. McKay shares the story of a young boys fight for survival in the graphic novel War Brothers. The story follows the memories of Kitino Jacob, a boy who was captured and forced to become a child soldier. This is a real story about the reign of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), in Uganda. This story can not only be read, but also felt through the imagination of the graphic novel’s illustrator, Daniel Lafrance. In War Brothers, McKay tells the heartfelt story through the characters, events, and thematic elements, which all determine how Lafrance illustrates the graphic novel.

Granted, War Brothers is a character driven story, which makes the characters of the

The characters in this story are real and are portrayed in Jacob’s perspective. Consequently, Lafrance makes his style match the realism of the characters, such as Jacob, by drawing them realistically with real emotions. From the start of the graphic novel to the end, it is pretty obvious that Lafrance drew Jacob as a person that looks and feels real. One of the more intriguing moments in the novel where this aspect of realism is shown is when Jacob and his classmates were being abducted by LRA rebels from Jacob’s school. Jacob gets knocked unconscious after looking questionably at one of the child soldiers. While Jacob wakes up from his unconscious state, Lafrance draws a panel through Jacob’s eyes which is blurred around the edges (37). This panel gives the reader a sense of realism, that shows that this event is something that actually happened to Jacob. Another way Lafrance showed

The graphic novel contains a flashback event and information that is connected to later events. As a result of this, Lafrance uses borderless thought and speech bubbles to foreshadow the outcomes of these events. In the beginning of the novel, Jacob is already seen as a child soldier. After that, the novel flashes back to a past event and tells the story up to when he becomes a child soldier following with his escape. Right before the flashback, Jacob is faced with the order to kill an innocent mother. He prepares to swing his panga at the mother but is stopped by a voice in his head. Lafrance depicts this voice as a borderless thought bubble unlike Jacob’s normal thoughts which are used as boxed voice overs (11). The reader can use this borderless voice to predict that Jacob will in fact not kill the woman. Furthermore, Lafrance uses a borderless speech bubble to foreshadow another future event in the book. When Jacob is watching his father discuss the LRA kidnapping children with a group of friends, his father’s oldest friend, Torac, mentions that his grandson was captured by the LRA. Lafrance uses the borderless speech bubble when Torac states his grandson’s name, Micheal (18). The emphasis on this statement can help the reader predict that Jacob will meet Torac’s grandson later on in the novel. Otherwise, the use of the borderless speech bubble would