The comics Lighter Than My Shadow, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me, and “Adventures in Depression” and “Depression Part 2” from Hyperbole and a Half each depict the struggles of mental illness in distinct ways. Interestingly, all of them share a unique element in portraying this mental illness. Each comic uses imagery of the main character interacting with what seems to be another self. This fragmenting self is used to highlight each character’s growth and progress from their illness. This is achieved by both the overall juxtaposition between the fragments as well as the different levels of interactions between the two entities.
Each comic involves a fragment of the main character communicating with themselves. In both Lighter and Marbles the presented fragmented self lacks many of the qualities of their respective disorder and this contradicts with the true self who still suffers from the disorder. This provides the reader with a sense of progression to their respective disorders. For example, in Lighter, whenever Katie decides she needs to disconnect herself from “the chatter in [her] head” (Green 192:2:1) there is an image where a fragment of herself begins to separate and the two selves look completely different. One is very large and fat, representative of how Katie views herself, …show more content…
This makes sense because Ellen was able to recover with less difficulty than Katie due to immediately having a great therapist, Karen, that aided her both verbally through meetings and physically through medication (Forney 112). Since she had less difficulty in her recovery, her conversation with her fragment was able to happen immediately and the two were able to completely acknowledge each other from the start (Forney 224). Ellen took only two pages of interaction to explain to her fragment that things will be better, while Katie’s binge eating interactions spanned around 40
Each comic involves a fragment of the main character communicating with themselves. In both Lighter and Marbles the presented fragmented self lacks many of the qualities of their respective disorder and this contradicts with the true self who still suffers from the disorder. This provides the reader with a sense of progression to their respective disorders. For example, in Lighter, whenever Katie decides she needs to disconnect herself from “the chatter in [her] head” (Green 192:2:1) there is an image where a fragment of herself begins to separate and the two selves look completely different. One is very large and fat, representative of how Katie views herself, …show more content…
This makes sense because Ellen was able to recover with less difficulty than Katie due to immediately having a great therapist, Karen, that aided her both verbally through meetings and physically through medication (Forney 112). Since she had less difficulty in her recovery, her conversation with her fragment was able to happen immediately and the two were able to completely acknowledge each other from the start (Forney 224). Ellen took only two pages of interaction to explain to her fragment that things will be better, while Katie’s binge eating interactions spanned around 40