Colorful Emotions

One of the most important consequences of the format of a graphic novel is the lack of clues to a character’s thoughts or feelings. Unlike a novel, wherein the author can bluntly write how his or her characters are feeling, a graphic novel depends much more on visual cues that may or may not be noticed by the reader. Actions are shown in visual novels, not described, so there is no opportunity to clue in the reader with phrases like someone ‘angrily’ replying or ‘timidly’ sitting. Everything is visual, and depends much more heavily on interpretation than words on a page. This problem is compounded in a novel like Jimmy Corrigan, wherein the characters are drawn in a cartoonish style, with very little detail on their small faces. These tiny faces, almost never bigger than a dime, are not as helpful as they could be in trying to determine a character’s mood, since we can see very few of the indicators that would visually signal to us in the real world what a person’s emotional state is.   

            However, that does not mean that the author is completely unable to set out clues indicating a character’s emotional state. For a graphic novel, a very important way for setting the mood and indicating emotions are colors. When certain colors appear repeatedly in situations where a certain emotion is likely to be inferred, one can then begin to link the occurrence of that color with that emotion. This association then helps the reader interpret other scenes, whose emotional contexts are perhaps not as explicitly understandable, by looking for color clues.

            One page I analyzed, wherein some of these color-emotion precedents might be set, is the page where Jimmy is on the red-tinged plane to meet his father and imagining twelve different ways his father might look, and twelve different greetings he would have for Jimmy. Given that we know Jimmy is a timid, immature man looking for acceptance, we can assume that some of the potential fathers he imagines would be much more terrifying than others. This fear is reflected in the red of those panels. The man with a forceful personality who calls him ‘Jimbo’ is entirely red-faced, because that kind of personality would be very intimidating for Jimmy; so too, the father who laughs at Jimmy’s name is dressed in red. Meanwhile, the fathers that are very friendly or accepting of Jimmy, two things Jimmy desperately longs for in his life, are portrayed in a blue background, and the fathers in a kind of emotional middle-ground are surrounded by brown.