Images In The Book Citizen

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As little kids when our parents would read to us, we sat there listening and staring at the pictures. We relied on the illustrations to guide us through the story and to help us understand what was going on in the story. Images have been able to tell stories that words can describe throughout the development of human life. There are many different kinds of art that can be used in different ways and can act in different relationships with writing. Although many books rely on images to get the point across, the book Citizen uses images in a different way which forces the readers to look again until they notice. In the lyric, Citizen by Claudia Rankine, the images and the text perform differently by asking the reader to rethink either the image or the text. Because the texts and the images complement each other, readers …show more content…

Without the images placed throughout the lyric, readers would not be able to gain as deep of an understanding of the circumstances described in the text and some connections might go unnoticed. For example, as we first begin the book, Claudia Rankine describes a situation occurring in a school. A girl is cheating off of the girl infront of her. Sister Evelyn does not do anything about it as far as we know. We read that possibly Sister Evelyn ““never actually saw you sitting there.” (6) This quote shows that the cheating incidence goes unnoticed because she does not pay attention to the student sitting in the front. Rankine also includes a part about a route in this section and says, “The route is often associative” (5). After reading this, readers may not know exactly what the route is. Is it the route to school? The route from the student’s locker to her desk? On the next page we get a picture of a neighborhood with a street sign labeled “Jim

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