FOCALIZATION IN LENE ASK’S GRAPHIC NOVEL HITLER, JESUS AND GRANDFATHER

Abstract

The article reviews the graphic novel “Hitler, Jesus and Grandfather” (2006) by the Norwegian artist and writer Lene Ask. The book has got several awards including the Sproing Prize 2006 for best Norwegian comic book of the year. In 2011 the novel was reprinted with an edition of five thousand copies. That’s a record edition for a Norwegian graphic novel. This is an autobiographical story about Ask’s protagonist establishing herself as an artist and finding her self-identity. This article compares focalization in the novel’s visual and textual component and shows how word-image combinations collaborate to create new levels in the narrative. One distinguishes four types of such collaboration in the narrative and concludes: the images in the novel show the narrator’s sensory experience: things that are happening in her life and her interaction with the other persons. Where the narrator lacks such an experience, the gaps are filled with the narrator’s visualization of the facts based on the media sources. The text presents the narrator’s internal monologue and helps the person to comprehend and come to grips with her sensory experience. The narrator verbalizes what is happening in her life and what has happened in the history of her family, asks some questions and looks for the answers trying to find the right place in her life. The panels where the text component is absent, describe usually the situations where the person experiences frustration or loss. Her emotions are too overwhelming, so that she can’t rationalize her experience through speech. In these situations the reader should fill the gaps with the help of one’s own life experience and take the role as a co-author of the story.