The formal characteristics of Asterios Polyp

Asterios Polyp

A variety of literary and audiovisual communication vehicles offer writers, photographers and videographers the ability to express themselves and entertain and/or inform their readers and viewers. The graphic novel is one of the more recent forms of communication that combines text, graphics and color to develop a storyline similar to a traditional novel with a beginning, middle and an ending moral or culminating underlying principle. In many respects, graphic novelists have greater thematic capability than a novelist, because they can utilize the color and graphics as added elements of expression. In Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli adroitly takes advantage of the combination of text, color and art to convey the protagonist's "coming of age," although later in life at the middle age of 50.

In most people, a time comes when they are no longer children but adults, which is considered "growing up" or "coming of age." In normal circumstances, the adults recognize their greater responsibilities and know that they are now assuming care for others instead of having others care for them. Hopefully, the narcissism that often accompanies adolescence and young adulthood disappears and the adult is able to form meaningful give-and-take relationships with others. This coming-of-age transition occurs at different times in everyone, since no two individuals are alike. Some children gradually reach this time and have a better understanding of the world around them. Others are rudely transposed into this adulthood arena through trauma or a tragedy, which affects them so greatly that they are totally changed. Asterios' transformation comes from one of these major life traumas.

The basic story, which took Mazzucchelli a decade to complete, consists of Asterios Polyp, a pompous, egocentric, condescending, scholarly academic who is known for his "paper architect" -- none of his designs have been built. He is subconsciously dealing with the fact that his twin was stillborn and the reason why he, not his brother, was saved. It is this twin who is narrates the story and speaks of the concept of the solitude of self-perception and the loneliness caused by the distinction between the way each person sees him or herself vs. The actual way that person is perceived by the world, which always remains partially unknown. This separation had its beginning many years before when Asterios' father came to the United States and "an exasperated Ellis Island official had cut the family name in half." It would have been Polyphemus, as in the one-eyed Cyclops.

Similarly, Asterios is unidimensional, not having emotional depth and being able to see through the eyes of anyone else. His relationships with women are one-sided and meaningless. Asterios is shown seated on an Ionic pedestal. As he floats in space and overlooks a Greek sculpture, the caption reads, "He taught because he loved the intellectual environment." This is followed by a series of graphics highlighting this admired professor's series of co-ed victories, described by a different female student in each adjacent panel saying, "Here's your coffee, professor." These are indicative of Asterios's life, one meaningless experience after another, which does not end even with his marriage.

Mazzucchelli also draws Asterios in a unidimensional and reserved fashion. This character has a perfectly round skull, but is nearly always drawn in profile, rarely facing the reader. This front face looks foward just occurs a couple of times, despite the over one thousand panels. and, when he does face forward, it is only at a three-quarter pose. Asterios' physical being, as his personality, is someone who continually looks either left or right, and his half-circle head never changes, no matter from what angle seen. Mazzucchelli uses this circle geometric form, because Asterios is an architect whose life is founded on applying rigid shapes as a definition of the environment around him. In addition, though Asterios goes through a transformation by the graphic novel's end, he never completely lets go of his intellectual side that is physically characterized by his round cranium. When utilizing this half-circle for the head and nose as seen from the side in profile, Asterios continues to be more aloof and less open and friendly. Instead of directing his words to those around him, including the reader and other characters in the book, he demonstrates his distance. At the same time, Hana is almost always facing forward.

The book begins with Asterios' life-changing tragedy. His wife, Hana, has left him, and his home is struck by lightning and burned to the ground. As he escapes from his apartment, he takes those things that apparently mean the most to him on a personal level: His childhood watch, his father's lighter, and a Swiss Army knife found by Hana. Traumatized, or at least suffering some form of shock, he buys a one-way ticket to wherever his money brings him to the middle of nowhere to rediscover his life. In the little town of Apogee, he becomes the assistant and friend of the auto mechanic Stiff Major, his wife, Ursula, who is able to see the many sides of life, and a revolutionary wantabe country-punk band called the Radniks. For the first time, he actually has his feet on the ground and dealing with the real, rather than the scholarly world.

Separation and the search for completion or duality is one of the main themes that Mazzucchelli uses to portray Asterios' changing views on life. Because of his dilemma of being a saved twin, Asterios does not feel like a whole being. In one of his lectures, for example, Asterios talks about the Apollonian and Dionysian Architecture, which refers to the Greek Apollo and Dionysus, the sons of Zeus. Apollo is the god of the sun, lightness, music, and poetry and Dionysus is the god of wine, ecstasy, and intoxication. Nietzsche uses the terms Apollonian and Dionysian in the Birth of Tragedy to symbolize the two central principles in Greek culture. Nietzsche believed that both forces were present in Greek tragedy, and that the true tragedy could only be produced by the tension between them. The Apollonian corresponds to Schopenhauer's principium individuationis, or "principle of individuation." All things that are part of a person's unique individuality are Apollonian in character, as are all structural forms, which define or individualize, and structured rational thought. The Dionysian corresponds to Schopenhauer's Will, and is directly the opposite of Apollonian. Drunkenness and madness, which are Dionysian, break individual character; individuality is given up as the person is submerged into the greater whole. Music is a Dionysian art, since it lends itself to a person's instinctive emotions, not the rational, reasoning mind.

This concept of duality, or lack of it, and self-concept is also interwoven with the relationship of Asterios and Hana -- a true example of "opposites attract." Through his work and teaching, Asterios sees things as structured and functional, and "anything not functional becomes decorative." His thoughts and designs are symmetrical, precise and meager -- yet never constructed because funding has been withdrawn. He sees his life as perfect as his drawings on paper, and goes from unintentionally hurting one woman to another through his self-absorption and feelings of perfection. Even time continues going from one period to another, flashing back and forth, from present/past and back again, the same with the city and countryside, along with the changing colors of blue, red, and yellow.

To the contrary, Hana is the abstract artist who works on unstructured sculptures in the middle of a cluttered studio. Her humility and lack of self-confidence does not allow her to personally gain from the many awards she has received from her artistic creations, which are all for decoration and lack of function. The design elements that are used by Mzzucchelli make Hana into a soft and out of focus and emotionally red character, who can see the whole and wholeness of life. In one scene, she asks, "Wait -- So…Eve was a clone of Adam?" If she were made from his rib," Asterios answers, "She would have the exact DNA." "Which is why they're…" "Twins."

The duality even exists on the cover before opening the book. Here, a suited, professorial snooty looking Asterios looks left, toward the spine and away from the reader. On the back, a more plainclothes Asterios, as when he is in Apogee, looks right, mirroring himself, or pretending to be his twin. The colors over the title of the reds and blues highlight Asterios' first years in academia and his troublesome years of marriage with Hana, while a band of yellow on the spine and larger one on the back, bring the future into the present to warm the cooler colors. Similarly, the sharp geometrical triangles, rectangles and squares on the title are indicative of the years as a paper architect, while the rounded title on the spine lend credence to Hana's world and what Asterios will become. Throughout the book, then, there is a continual back-and-forth about opposites attracting and interacting and whether dualities and symmetry are a fabrication of human innovation, or instead the objective order of the universe. Mazzucchelli on behalf of Asterios (or Ignazio in abstentia) asks in words and graphics whether dividing lives into dualities and opposites is simply easier for than accepting "a sphere of possibilities." As Asterios states as he bends his head over his cigarettes, which are an unusual addiction for such a structured person, "It's just a convenient organizing principle." "As long as one doesn't mistake the system for reality," answers Ignazio. Although Asterios believes that he can handle the human tendency to simplify and sever, it is this division that breaks his emotional attachment with Hana, causing their relationship to dry up with neglect and boredom.

The scenes of disharmony between Hana and Asterios are text- and graphic-filled and colorful and morphing. In exaggerated graphics that portray how each person is thinking, Mazzuchelli shows how individuals build walls around themselves and become introverted as they are placed on the defensive and dealing with personal conflict and pain. Differences between the two are scattered throughout the book. Where Asterios sees two shapes, blocks laid out next to each other, looking like two tall towers, Hana sees three, or both the right and left blocks and the negative space that simultaneously divides and joins them. When he draws into himself Asterios turns into an architectural drawing in crisp blueline, Hana instead turns into a rounded spatial lines defined in red-magenta.

In one particularly emotional scene, Hana and Asterios are in bed when Asterios reveals that he has been taping everything in his apartment, as befits his structural, mechanical self. This video "doppelganger" makes him feel like he is not alone, "it's comforting to know they're there, in the next room." Asterios explains how he always knew something was different about himself, perhaps something wrong. He felt isolated, as if he were not there at all. Yet, he always felt something was with him. Then, when he was a teenager, he learned about his twin and it made sense. This should have eased his mind, says Asterios, but instead, the older he became, the more haunted he felt. In this scene Hana starts as bright pink as she tries to understand what he is saying, but then changes over to purple as she truly realizes the ramifications of this act. The two figures become separated not only by color and construct but also by the lines of the panels. Their communication is first disjointed and then builds to being broken.

Then, however, on the next page, the action is reversed. Hana remains purple, but her hand reaches out to Asterios and the two curl up as one on the bed. Hana seeks refuge in the stories of the Egyptian tombs or of the first Chinese emperor with the rows of clay soldiers, like a shadow of the living world. Yet, even as they lay together after Hana's acceptance, the visual, without Hana's normally representative red, shows how two people intertwined can still feel alone and isolated together as one, but still not as one Graphically, each character's voice is distinctly written and varied to match their individual personalities. This is accentuated in the scenes of turmoil between Asterios and Hana, where their appearances transform into their most basic character traits and demonstrate the difference between them.

As is the case in many marriages, the isolation between Asterios and Hana becomes greater as the couple lives together longer and the "honeymoon" comes to an end. In one six-page sequence, the mundane trivialities of married life, although heartwarming when thought of in flashbacks by Asterios, are drawn one after another. In different sizes and angles, Hana brushes her teeth and bends over to zip up her dress and a single hair sticks curls up on a bar of soap. The rectangles come closer and closer together as the thoughts come faster and faster across the page. As the sequence continues, the rectangles fill up the page at what feels like an increasingly rapid pace: Hana flossing, waving away cigarette smoke, applying lipstick, farting, bathing, throwing up in the toilet, popping a pimple

It is in Apogee, "apology," that Asterios finds redemption. Away from his earlier life and faced with a loving family who are well grounded in the here and now, he begins to see another side of existence. His scholarly mind, which only used words and never constructed anything but sentences, quickly uses its intelligence to shift into the mechanical world of automobiles and trucks. As he gets to know the family, a close-knit mother, father and son, he helps out with another major development -- the first building he has ever constructed -- a tree house, made with his own hands along with Stiff.

When explaining his relationship with Hana to Stiff, Asterios compares it to the theory of Aristophane who said, "Mankind, judging by their neglect of him, have never at all understood the power of Love." Aristophane contested that if humans had understood him they would have constructed elaborate temples and altars and offered solemn sacrifices in his honor. He attempted to describe his power and to instruct everyone else what he hoped for them to learn. He spoke first of the nature of man and what had become of it and the changing form of human nature and relationships. Originally, the sexes were three in number: Man, woman, and the union of the two. There was a special form, with a bodily shape and a name of its own, created by the union of the two genders. However, only the word "androgynous" remains, and only as a term of censure. Says Asterios to his brother: "Aristophanes would have probably seen in us the vindication of his purported theory. By consolidating our individual designs, we erected an edifice of eloquent equilibrium, but it turned out that reality, as I perceived it, was simply an extension of myself."

Yet, it was Ursula who surprisingly had the most down-to-earth advice. "The mistake most people make is that they look at the wrong things," she explains. Somehow humans have lost touch with the things around them and had to invent new words. For example, Stiff has a good nose for people. Actually, she explains, people are not that difficult to figure out. It is just best to ignore what they say and watch what they do. Ursula tells Asterios she sees the sadness in him, despite all his talk, and recognizes that he has suffered a great loss and is trying to run away from it. The scenes at Apogee are bright and cheerful, in yellows. As soon as Asterio walks into their home, he is confronted by a typical family look, with scattered toys and messes here and there. The structure is lacking, until he is taken to his new room, which, as Ursula explains, "is the "Most auspicious arrangement with a I could come up with, so I advise you not to move anything." The room is complete with dream catchers, upside down tables, and burned candles. Here is everything that Asterios has always been against, including the talk of shamans, astrology and rebirth.

Another main theme in this book is the Odyssey, or "Ithaca," where Asterios taught. Asterios' trip away from Hana is similar to Odysseus's journey in several ways. As Asterios searches for answers, he heads into the netherworld. To attain absolution, he must turn into Orpheus, the play on which Hana is assisting, and rescue Eurydice from the grips of Hades. This very graphic, but dark scene that continues for several pages, is one of the more interesting in the book. In a downpour of rain, Asterios climbs down the stairs into the flooded subway station and passes by all the one-dimensional people with whom he once chatted at parties. He finally reaches the theater and watches as Orpheus forgets and turns back at Eurydice. Once again, Asterios has thus lost Hana, and he is truly heartbroken.