Isolation in Jimmy Corrigan

One of the major themes of Jimmy Corrigan is isolation. Jimmy spends most of his life in isolation; he seems to have no friends and doesn’t meet his father until late in his life, and despite the fact that he calls his mother on a daily basis, they aren’t close. One of the pages that illustrates this theme the most clearly is one of the first pages, the page where Jimmy’s mother is calling him downstairs.

The page begins with a picture of the Earth from very far away, and the images following zoom in and out to make the Earth bigger and smaller until eventually Jimmy’s house is pictured. The first image of the Earth from far away shows how isolated the Earth is. Upon first looking at the picture, the reader could easily confuse the tiny Earth with the stars surrounding it. Chris Ware uses this image to depict how tiny the Earth is in comparison to the rest of the universe—merely a dot on a page. The second image zooms in on the Earth, and the third image depicts Jimmy’s mother calling from him somewhere on the Earth. Ware’s depiction of only Jimmy’s mother’s speech in this image shows how isolated Jimmy feels because even with billions of people on the Earth speaking, only his mother’s voice could be heard. None of the other voices are heard because Jimmy is isolated from them. The third image zooms in further on the Earth, and the fourth image zooms in on the city skyline where Jimmy lives. The fifth and sixth images zoom out, and they only depict Jimmy’s city, leaving out all of the other cities. This omission of the surrounding cities makes Jimmy’s city seem isolated. The last image zooms in on Jimmy’s house. It is clear that there are other buildings around Jimmy’s house, but they are not clearly depicted. Jimmy’s house is drawn with much more detail than the surrounding buildings, making it seem isolated from everything around it. This sequence of images portrays Jimmy’s feelings of isolation. He feels that he is alone in his house, which is alone in his city, which is alone on the Earth, which is alone in the universe.

Ware has claimed that he based some aspects of Jimmy on himself, and feeling isolated is one of the ways in which Ware and Jimmy are similar. According to “The Smartest Cartoonist on Earth” by Daniel Raeburn, when Ware moved to Chicago, “he went through a period of hellish, heartbroken isolation,” and Ware created the lonely character of Jimmy during this time. To this claim, Ware replied, “Yup. Exactly. My sketchbooks from that time are filled with strips where, basically, I am him.” One could look at the page discussed earlier as reflecting the loneliness that Ware felt during this time; the city depicted even looks like Chicago. Ware’s use of these images that show Jimmy’s isolation contribute to the overall theme of isolation throughout the graphic novel.