The Graphic Novel Ethel and Ernest

The graphic novel Ethel and Ernest was a very different experience for me pertaining to the actual process of reading. I am used to the novel form and found it very hard to get almost all of the material from the text bubbles in the frames. I expected that the pictures would help me to understand the material better than a story that was set in the typical prose form, but I found that the pictures were distracting to me as I was reading. The actual form of the graphic novel does present many opportunities for the text to convey its meaning and purpose that I feel that a standard novel may not have however.

Ethel and Ernest as characters are somewhat polar opposites, and it was surprising to me that they even ended up marrying in the first place. Ethel has lavish and almost unrealistic expectations for what her life should be like. Ernest, on the other hand, is a very simple man who finds happiness in things that are more realistic and cost less. Ernest is perfectly happy in his job as a milk man and sees no reason to want a promotion to a job where he would be plagued by stress. Ethel, in contrast, is constantly thinking of ways to improve their current situation, whether it may be their house or their son's future.

The attitude that Ethel has toward owning nice things, and having a son who is respectable, seemed to be to be a very "American" attitude for someone in Europe to have. The fact that she was never content with the items in her house, or even in the fact that Raymond wanted to be an artist, was very consumerist, something which I never really attributed to European society and always attributed to the fundamental capitalism of America. I found this to be ultimately amusing however, considering that Raymond became a famous author as well as the artist for his own works.

Ethel and Ernest, in conclusion, was a very unique reading experience for me in regard to how it depicted the events of their lives. The text presented historical events through their experiences with them, in an almost human reaction type of documenting. Instead of simply "telling" the reader about the events that occurred to these two people, it "showed" them. I am not completely referring to the fact that there were illustrations throughout the text, but also to the fact that their opinions and emotions were directly represented by their text bubbles, making the characters words seem more credible and real to the reader because we are to believe that they are actually the words of the characters.