Jimmy Corrigan takes flight

As I was reading Jimmy Corrigan, I was struck with awe and amazement at nearly everything: the colors, storyline, artwork, symbols, tone, etc. Then, when I returned to the text a second time (although I still have yet to finish the last section), I was overwhelmed at how well Ware has woven all these elements together to produce an overall helpless and sympathetic effect on the reader. As there's so much to highlight, I wanted to pick one small element (that is not so small) - the birds - that we didn't have time to discuss in Tuesday's class.

Just as the interlude "smack[s]" the reader like a commercial out of Jimmy's accident with the mail truck, birds generally serve as an interlude between time and scene shifts, as well as show the passing of time. Even in this mail truck interlude, Jimmy sits in a park and records the birds singing. But what he records next - the sound of an airplane - perhaps gives us our first clue into what purpose the birds serve for the text. In this juxtaposition of birds and airplanes, the birds are the natural flight of the manmade device. The airplane is also what carries Jimmy to his father, what would seemingly carry Jimmy to his mother for Thanksgiving, and where Jimmy dreams of being a robot (perhaps addressing the robotic nature of his parental relationships and the synthetic element of the airplane all in one). In the latter panel where Jimmy is a robot, a bird sits behind him on the airplane seat and a peach tree hangs over him. In this manner, the artwork futhers the case that birds are the natural version of airplanes. Often as the reader is overwhelmed with scenes of the sterile city background, nature imposes upon the landscapes: dead branches stick out from many angles (take the uploaded image or 6.7 or all of 23 as examples) and plants appear indoors (in the airport in pots, the flowered pillow at Jimmy's father's place, in the hospital, etc). This idea of nature versus synthetic can be applied not only to the birds and airplanes, but to many elements in the Corrigans' relationships and the span of generations over a changing environment.

Of course, however, looking at the birds in comparison to airplanes only covers one aspect of "flight". The birds also parallel the superman motif in the text (an interlude in Jimmy's head in the hospital scene clearly demonstrates this) and show how the red color of the bird is also important (i.e. the mask). Again during this hospital interlude, the word "smack" appears when the bird hits the window, and the doctor chalks the noise up to, "Yeah...it's just some stupid bird." But where the bird is natural and the airplane is manmade, superman is obviously make-believe, and the leap of the superman from the building addresses how the imagination fails to mix with reality.

It's no accident either that Thanksgiving becomes Ware's focal point, and the turkey is covered often with the name Estelle, Jimmy's mother. It's also no accident that the bee (another representation of flight) appears on James' grandmother's deathbed. The connections that stem from the bird (and its flight) are amazingly detailed and serve the novel in meaningful and complex ways. For example, one can futher analyze the element of sounds (the bird's singing, the noise of the airplane, and the "smack") a step further, comparing the sound of the horse hoofs on the porch and up the stairs and the "slap" of the screen door with all the other sounds this novel makes.