Analysis Of Daniel Clowes Ghost World

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Aiming at elder teenagers who are facing or have experienced the process of entering adulthood, the cartoonist Daniel Clowes illustrates the twisting feeling between resistances and attempts during the transition toward adulthood in his successful graphic novel Ghost World. In the story, the author characterizes the two protagonists Enid Coleslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer as rebellious and cynical; they aimlessly wander around the town and "their main activity, though, is mocking -- with a callow conviction worthy of Holden Caulfield -- the phoniness and hypocrisy that surrounds them. (Scott). By portraying the entering adulthood melodrama based on his own experience, the rhetorician illustrates contemporary teenagers' angst and confusion triggered …show more content…

Thus, by illustrating the protagonist's twisting inner feeling between the attempt to suit in and the resistance toward the constantly changing external world and unknown adulthood, author Daniel Clowes constructs an entering adulthood melodrama with the help of graphic novel components, which provokes readers to consider teenage angst and the fear during coming of age time, and expresses the author's compassion of the coming of age …show more content…

Readers could notice that the friendship is strained as the story progress. The rhetorician points out it by offering the fierce confliction between the two protagonists when Rebecca finds out that Enid is preparing for the college entrance exam, and thus has the potential to go to college and leave the town. Rebecca accuses Enid by saying" you are trying to sneak away or something." (Clowes 59) After the quarrel, Rebecca leaves Enid a middle finger with and the words "have fun in college." (Clowes 60) Thus, when she suddenly finds out that her friend might leave her, she feels indignant and afraid. These accusations imply that Rebecca hasn't realized that growing up means change, which is definitely realistic in real life. For example, leaving high school to colleges in different areas, lots of friendships are blocked, and might end. It's not because teenagers do not want the friendship anymore, but the objective conditions could be relentless. Though the two girls seem to reconcile in the book very soon, Clowes subverts the convention of restoring friendship by let Enid leave the town alone, without telling Rebecca. In the last scene of the graphic novel, the author portrays that the two girls are

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