Text: Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde
Choose a COMPLEX OF IDEAS from Safe Area Gorazde. As I explained in class, a complex of ideas is much like a theme, or a motif, or a trope – it is an idea or a group of ideas that comes up again and again. Sacco clearly has his agendas – he wants you to know a little bit about what it feels like to be the people in his book in order to grasp their predicament – he wants, in the words of the novelist Richard Currey, “to impart emotional knowledge.”

In your 2-3 page paper, argue that Safe Area Gorazde is fundamentally about a particular bit of emotional knowledge – there are lots of them, but you should choose (and express) one. Use QUOTES and DESCRIPTIONS of visual texts as evidence to support your assertion.

Stick to a couple of related vignettes, or to recurring vignettes (like “Silly Girls”), to make your points.

A prototype of your thesis will likely look like this:

Safe Area Gorazde is fundamentally about _______, and my proof is [this complex of ideas] suggested [by this textual evidence (quotes and descriptions)].