Special Exits By Joyce Farmer: Analysis

Joyce Farmer illustrates the challenges of caring for her aging parents. The graphic memoir Special Exits is the relationship between an adult child and elderly parents with declining health issues. Surprised by a publication interest, Special Exits is a thirteen-year therapeutic project Farmer started years after her parent’s death (Vankin, 2010). The fourteen chapters in the graphic memoir discussed topics that most people fear and deny, the aging process. Farmers’ father Lars and stepmother Rachel experience dementia, hoarding, depression, lack of medical care, nursing home issues, and death. I am a little perplexed why Farmer created the avatar Laura representing herself as the daughter in the graphic memoir when the story is about parents. Is Farmer reflecting on her experience as a caretaker or distancing herself from it? While Farmer’s drawings are black and white images, she uses a pen and ink crosshatching techniques to demonstrate the contrast between light and dark, which could also contribute the storyline of life and death (183). There is much to unpack in Farmer’s emotional experience of being a caregiver, from sponge bathing her stepmother on the couch to arguing with the doctors at the nursing home. I focused my attention on the panels on page fifty-one. I argue Farmer’s visual narrative illustrates the challenges of taking …show more content…
Throughout the graphic memoir, Farmer illustrates the plight of being a caretaker and her frustration of trying to get the father to understand the help he needs for himself and for Rachel. Farmer successfully invokes your emotions about an inedible future for many with aging parents or grandparents. Special Exits allows the reader to see the challenges of dealing with doctors, nursing homes, day-to-day care of an aging parent and not lose yourself in the mixed of