By: Will Eisner
Prezi By: Steven Foldenauer
A Quick Plot Summary
A Contract With God and Scott McCloud
- Here are a couple of ways A Contract with God can be taught with McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.
A Contract with God consists of four independent stories that revolve around poor Jewish characters that live in a New York City Tenement
- Chapter 1- "A Contract with God:" follows a religious man who gives up his faith after the death of his young adopted daughter
- Chapter 2- "The Street Singer:" follows a has-been diva who tries to seduce a poor street singer, who tries to take advantage of her in turn.
- Chapter 3- "The Super:" The Super of the tenement is driven to suicide after being falsely accused of pedophilia.
- Chapter 4- "Cookalein:" follows multiple characters who are spending vacation in the Catskill Mountains.
Characters and Landscape
Line Type
- In chapter two, McCloud explains a simply drawn character allows the reader to empathise more easily with the character, because there are fewer details. This allows for the seperation between the character and the reader to become hazy.
- McCloud goes on to explain a realistic environment. Having a detailed landscape juxtaposed with a less detailed character allows the reader to be drawn into this imaginary world developed by the creators.
- In A Contract With God, each character is drawn with less detail, but surrounded by a very realistic enviornment, emphasizing McCloud's claims.
Art and Word Interactions
- In Chapter five, McCloud shows the different ways of expressing emotion in comics. This can be expressed through the line types, backgrounds, lettering style, etc.
- McCloud directly references Eisner saying he has a "full range of line styles" expressing a "full range of moods and emotions" (126).
- The Most obvious example of lines expressing emotion is Eisner's atching method with the rain; howver, line type plays a large role throughout the graphic novel.
- McCloud discusses art an words can interact. He lists multiple ways words interact in pictures, but the interacton that is relevant in relation to A Contract With God is "Montage."
- Montage is when words are treated as integral parts of the picture.
- This cn be seen throughout A Contract with God, especially in the first chapter.
summary source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Contract_with_God
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.
Why This Work Is Important and Should Be Included In The Curriculum
Representation of Jews and MAUS
Style In A Contract With God
A Contract with God and Maus
- Religious and cultural Jewish symbols are prominent throughout A Contract with God.
- There is a communal sense that blinds the characters and their "Jewishness together" (Royals 160).
- Eisner wrote this book to shed light on aspects of Jewish American history that he felt had gone unnoticed or discussed.
- It provides an in-depth analysis of Jewish representations, not shown in any other works, other than Maus.
- A Contract with God should not replace Maus. Rather, it should be read side by side to give a different take on representations of Jews in graphic novels. A compare and contrast activity could be done.
- A Contract With God answeres the question for course objectives: How do text and image function differently in combination?
- The use of lettering as part of the artwork is not prominent any other work we have read.
- Eisner's avoidance of conventional box-style panels makes A Contract with God unique and important to include in the curriculum.
- The book gives another look at an episodic graphic novel, which I feel is missing from this curriculum. Most graphic novels have chapters, but each chapter continues off the previous one. Contract is more episodic, similar to The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. Another example of this type of graphic novel would add variety to the curriculum.
- McCloud and Einser can be taught in unison. McCloud's chapters bring attention to many of Eisner's stylistic techniques in A Contract With God, and Eisner emphasizes many of McCloud's claims.
- A Contract With God is simple and an easy read, but that does not take away from the major artistic styles and subject matter present in the text.
- I think this would make a great addition to the curriculum.
- The graphic novel is set up as individual stories--in episodic form. The same individual characters do not appear in each episode, but all the stories revolve around the building 55 Dropsie Avenue.
- In many of the passages, Eisner uses rain, with a hatching method, to symbolize feelings and emotions being washed over the characters.
- The rain represents the situations and issues The characters are dealing with.
- In the first chapter, the rain symbolizes feelings of despair.
- The hatching method of the rain, allows the characters to be framed by the rain, emphasizing Eisner's style and lack of traditional panels.
- Paneling is very rare in A Contract With God, allowing readers to focus on specific images and not have to worry if they are reading panels in the right order.
- Characters are framed in doorways or window frames.
- In most comic books, the captions are set aside, usually in boxes, and are only meant to provide background. In A Contract With God, the captions are integrated in the artwork. The words and the pictures become one stylistic entity.
- Time Period: Both texts were written during the same time. Also, the timelines of the stories overlap, so both stories deal with the aftermath of WWII.
- The time period adds to a major difference between the two. Both take place in different countries. Contract gives another aspect of Jewish life, during the events of Maus.
- Poverty: Both stories focus on poverty; however, Contract deals with poverty in the city, while Maus deals with poverty and the Holocaust.
- Both are autobiographical and both end with the death of the main character.
The main importance of these two texts is that they provide two different aspects of Jewish life during the same time period, and representation of Jews through the medium of graphic novels.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus. New York, NY: Pantheon, 1986. Print.
Eisner, Will. A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories. New York: DC Comics, 1996. Print.