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| Amazon. (2017). Blankets. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Blankets-Craig- Thompson/dp/177046218X |
Thompson, C. (2003). Blankets.
Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions. 1-891830-43-0
Summary:
This 500+-page autobiographical graphic novel is a story
that is told in words and sketches of Craig’s maturation from a young boy to a
teen a young adult who has come into his own understanding of the world, his
natural creativity, and life without the overprotectiveness of the church that
he was raised in.
As a young boy, Craig and his brother Phil were like typical
siblings: constantly squabbling and fighting, but nowhere was this bickering
more present than in the fact that they shared a room, a bed, blankets. But
they also had some their moments of brotherly love: drawing together,
play-imagining that their bed was a ship and their stuffed animals their fellow
pirates, and snow and ice games in the winter.
Craig was always curiously pious: he was active in Sunday
School, read his Bible, often talked at length with his pastor, and attended
church camp over Christmas break. The Christmas break of his senior year, he
met Raina, a girl who lived in neighboring Michigan. Together, they eschewed
the jocks and the bullies and the grunge rule-breakers. While the story isn’t
always told in chronological order, then-Craig’s ponderings on church dogma and
Bible passages often segue between different time jumps.
Craig and Raina kept in touch via snail mail once they went
home, but they grew very close, close enough that Craig went to visit Raina for
two weeks over spring break. There, Craig helped Raina look after her family:
parents going through a divorce, older sister’s baby, two siblings who have
cognitive and/or physical disabilities. Raina was the glue holding their family
together, and Craig provided the support that helped keep Raina’s head above
water. But Raina and Craig also spent time together: talking about themselves,
sharing their spiritual beliefs, exploring the wintery forest, cuddling under
the blanket that Raina made for Craig, and having sex. This provided a lot of
cognitive dissonance for Craig: Raina was the first person he met whom he
trusted and loved that had different beliefs than the Baptist teachings he got
from his parents and church-- plus they had premarital sex, which until that
moment, Craig abhorred due to its definition of lust and temptation.
When Craig left Raina to return home, he was advised from
his pastor and other members of his church to not go to art school despite his
passion and talent as an artist. There, they warned, he would have to paint
from live models, which would turn him into a homosexual.
At 20, Craig moved out of his parents’ house and “gorged”
himself on reading without censorship, seeing girls for their beauty outside
and inside, and drinking. He only came back to Wisconsin sparingly: his
brother’s wedding to a geology student who told him how the earth is 4.5
billion years not 6,000 as the Bible states. While home, he finds his Bible,
hidden at the bottom of a box, and leafs through it. He finds the book to be
much less assuring than when he was younger with footnotes, translation
difficulties, and his more expansive personal context. Craig is fine with the
person --the devout Christian-- he was a teen. And he’s okay with the person he
is now: someone content with the limited impact he will make on the world. It’s
okay, he’s discovered, to not live life only concerned with eternal salvation.
He can make life on earth beautiful with that energy instead.
As a Format/Genre Example:
As an artist, Thompson is sharing his story of struggle,
doubt, and bildungsroman with readers. He reaches a wider audience with the
graphic novel format than if it were the traditional format because young men
are the ones who need to read the story and to realize that it’s okay to
struggle and to have self-doubts. Like the module notes state, young men aren’t
often the ones visiting the library, but, with graphic novels, they can be
enticed. As such, Thompson is meeting his target audience where they are and
reinforcing the importance of art (and reading) through his medium. It’s rare
for a story (of any medium) to say/show that it’s okay for males to be
introspective, good with kids, to think about God/theology, artistic instead of
athletic, and to not be raging sex fiends because that’s what culture/society
defines as “quintessential male”.
Evaluation:
I’m not usually a fan of graphic novels, but I enjoyed
the theological aspect of Blankets.
I’m fully of the opinion that everyone should make their own mind up about
their beliefs, and I’m very content with the fact that Craig doesn’t limit
himself and his thinking to what was drilled into him by his parents (if he had
gone through the same processing and come out on the same page as his parents,
I would be fine with that, too). I thought that Craig and Raina’s relationship
was really sweet. It started out so very innocently and then rapidly progressed
to a mature relationship because of Raina’s role within her family. I hate that
she’s been put in such a hard place and give such adult responsibilities. She
is the youngest of four kids and has to take care of them all. I would
recommend Blankets to someone who is
struggling with their faith to show them that it’s okay to have doubts and it’s
okay to struggle with your understanding of God. Our relationships with God are
constantly shifting and evolving, and Blankets
is a good illustration (ha!) of that.
Reader's Advisory:
Of any of the genres we’ve studies this semester, Blankets most closely aligns with
Inspirational fiction. However, it is definitely not the typical Karen
Kingsbury or Tracie Peterson of the Evangelical Christian subgenre. I actually
had a patron come in a couple of months ago looking for the type of book that Blankets would fit: inspirational (more
so of the relationship with God variety than the cured of cancer variety),
thought-provoking, and asks the deep/hard questions. I wish I had known about
it then so that I could recommend it to him.
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