ENG 4433: Topics in World Lit

There's a darker, flip side to the world of graphic novels. A world where you thoughtlessly dissociate yourself from the lives being lived out between the bound boards of that book you're holding. Okay, it's the book I'm holding (I apologize for projecting, it's a terrible habit). The book is Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy DeLisle. (DeLisle 31) DeLisle isn't drawing and writing about super-heros (subtract the hyphen and you've got a word that is copyrighted by Marvel and DC), or anti-heros, or fantastical realms. He's doing something altogether different and a bit shocking. He's writing about his real-life experience. And in North Korea, no less. There are 8,148 km between Canada, where Guy DeLisle is from, and North Korea. Those numbers don't really do the trick of illustrating the true distance between these two countries, however the panel above does an excellent job. We see the sparse and shadowy suggestion of face...

Hey guys! once again, back with another video blog hope you guy enjoy! :) I am appreciative are you?   --- CLICK LINK to see if you are! Works Cited Delisle, Guy, and Thomas Lundbo.  Pyongyang . Aschehoug, 2008. Sacco, Joe.  Safe Area Gorazde the War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95 . Fantagraphics Books, 2017.

I have never visited North Korea. So long as it remains a totalitarian dictatorship, I have no intention to. However, I have always been morbidly fascinated with the Kim dynasty and the mysteries that lie beyond the borders of Pyongyang. With the country so isolated, I can only rely on second-hand accounts--mostly limited to foreigners whose perception of North Korea is colored by strictly supervised visits to the capital city--to learn more about it. Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea , an illustrated account of Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle's visit to North Korea, is far from the only piece of literature I've read on the subject. But I can comfortably say that it is among the most informative, and that is largely due to the medium. Delisle wastes no time introducing the setting. He is a foreigner in a strange, potentially hostile country. His visit is limited to the capital city of Pyongyang, and he is only permitted to travel to a few select places with the supervision...

i just cant today sorryyyyyyyyyyy!!!!

Most of us have heard about North Korea, correct? I’ve heard about this country since middle school, but if I’m being quite honest, I don’t know much about it, and I’m not the type to assume things based off rumors or stereotypes, so reading Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea really gave me an insight on what this country is like. Delisle, Guy, and Helge Dascher. Pyongyang: a Journey in North Korea. Drawn & Quarterly Books, 2018.  Pyongyang is the type of graphic novel we as readers rely on both the art and the text because we are learning about a country completely different from our own. One page before the one above, we are told about the importance of Kim Il-sung but are then shown on page 8. If we take a look, there are two panels that have no words whatsoever, so we rely on the previous written information. The two wordless panels emphasize Kim Il-sung’s significance. The people are looking up at it and are even leaving it flowers, so we get the s...

Use the word comic book to anyone and you can almost guarantee they think of superheroes and blazing colors. But investigative journalism into war-torn zones? Nah! Actually yes. Comics are not just for kids. Sometimes they answer probing questions about a culture or situation. Cartoonist Delisle did just that while working for a French film company. He recorded the culture of one of the last communist societies, the capital of North Korea. Through his graphic novel Pyongyang , Americans get to see a strange country. His sparse line work in humorous, simple vignettes really gives us a feeling of that culture’s monotony. This society seems to be all out of imperfection and dissent. Detailed scenes of the narrator’s boring everyday activities are shown, even down to him noticing the kind of bulbs in his hotel room (Delisle 22). These small moments and actions help us feel more connected to the country. Safe Area Gorazde’s comic book format, by wartime journalist Joe Sacco, does th...

Pyongyang by Guy Delisle opens up a view of North Korea that most people in America would never know about. Delisle’s descriptions and illustrations flow together perfectly to illuminate what life could be like in North Korea. His text to image correlations are phenomenal. In particular, the final two panels of page 25 show something I would never expect to see in any city. He describes the emptiness of the streets and even mentions that there are “no old folks chatting” or milling about because of the sterility of the city. The image of the police officer may not say but does imply that this is something that is encouraged or even enforced in North Korea. Could you imagine walking down the street and not seeing a single soul? Most of the movies I’ve seen would tell me that a zombie apocalypse happened if that’s the case, but that’s just normal life in North Korea according to Delisle. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics describes the different types of...

Hello everyone. Today I read rather interesting graphic novel called “Pyongyang: a journey in North Korea” by Guy Delisle, the Canadian cartoonist and animator. The story is about his time in North Korea as an animator. While we've all heard horror stories about North Korea, footage is rare and hard to come by, so it's hard to get an accurate depiction of what it's really like there. By coincidence a while back I watch the documentary on North Korea that contain footage of a kind of tour guide walkthrough of parts of North Korea. So I can say with all certainty that this graphic novel seems to capture the exact same experience. One of the big things in common this novel has with the documentary, was that they only get to see what the North Korean government would allow them to see. One of the things that seems to always be on the tour in both the documentary and this graphic novel, is the giant statue of the “great leader” as seen in this page.   The novel depicts North...

I've never had the opportunity to leave the United States. My family could never afford it. So I've spent a lot of my life reading books about places I've never been able to and probably never will be able to visit. I've become something of a connoisseur of books that tell tales of travels and faraway places as a result. I'm always on a search for books to introduce me to new places. The most recent read of my literary travels has been Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle. This graphic novel documents Delisle's two-month visit to the capital of North Korea when he was working with an animation firm there in 2001. I've honestly had very limited exposure to anything and everything North Korea; one of my exes tried to get me to watch a documentary on the country one but I just couldn't get into it. Delisle's story, though, did interest me. I couldn't put it down once I started reading. What made it interesting was that Delisle ...

                                                      A journalist reports, writes, photographs, and then delivers news of recent or past events whether it be on newspaper, on TV, or online to their audience. Graphic journalism delivers art as well as text to go along to take part in sharing a story. Graphic journalism delivers comic art as the visual. There are many forms of comics to choose from, for example, a comic strip, graphic novel, visual narrative, or manga, just to name a few. The comic form depends solemnly on what type of message, or story a person is going to explain or show in art. The sequential art takes a huge role in delivering images to a comic that will then help that comic tell the story or narrative within images being used. An independent combination is when both images and text are both used hand-in hand to deliver a messag...

I enjoyed reading the excerpt from Pyongyang: A Journey to North Korea . In this graphic novel, Guy Delisle takes us into an unknown part of the world- North Korea. The story follows the narrator, a westerner, as he visits North Korea for the first time. Americans have little to no knowledge of what life in North Korea is like. North Korea is unlike any other country; it has isolated itself from the rest of the world. And yet, the North Korea Delisle depicts is not the North Korea I would have imagined. What should be an unfamiliar place, seems familiar. Pyongyang presents North Korea in a civilized manner. Granted there are some political policies in place that may not make North Korea seem familiar, overall North Korea is shown as having art, culture, architecture, and the normalities of a large city life- crazy traffic and busy subways. Had Delisle not used the comic book medium to tell this story, I would not have come to the same conclusions. The visual depiction of the architect...

Guy Delisle shoes readers a cold, empty shell of a city: South Korea. It's a small piece of the wold that is an isolated little piece of hell. Upon arrival, the comic shows a copy of George Orwell's 1984. The guard asks what it is, because he has no idea of the significance of the novel. No idea that he's living a version of 1984 himself. Readers may have no first-hand knowledge of South Korea, but we've all heard different, awful things. The underweight citizenry. The frantic worship of the leader. The lost in time, communist regime. The comic strip somehow makes it seem worse. A deserted city with no electricity and wet, dirty table cloths. It's the desertion that gets to me. I can't imagine the isolation and loneliness, especially when we know, just KNOW there are people hidden from view, suffering. This comic shows the nothingness of  Pyongyang. The streets are deserted. The shabby number one, two and three cafes are empty. The only place well lit is the e...

Throughout the course of my English Literature degree path, one thing I have become accustomed to is that, in order for something to be "remarkable" it had to be a literary work of genius with specific literary techniques and little to no pictures. Everything I studied seemed to be 500 pages of black and white text bound together to make one complete masterpiece. That is, until I enrolled in a graphic novel course. That is when my whole perspective of literature changed. Suddenly, literature wasn't confined to books that never seemed to end or stories that used language that the modern world is so unfamiliar with.  So, how does a graphic novel become "remarkable?" Let's take a look at a story called Pyongyang by Guy Delisle. This is a graphic novel that takes journalism, combines it with a memoir, and then adds a unique artistic element that only further enhances its profound ability to tell a story. Pyongyang is a graphic novel about a man from Cana...

In Guy Delisle’s travelogue Pyongyang , in which Delisle takes readers into North Korea with him on a work assignment. The graphic novel is written as part memoir and part travelogue to give readers a look into how someone who isn’t from North Korea (a foreigner) would experience North Korea. Delisle shows readers the differences between North Korea and other countries by providing readers with some of the rules and regulations that he was provided with upon arriving. This list details what he could and could not have in his procession while visiting North Korea and also what he could and could not do. This is how Delisle shows us the difference between North Korea and other countries, when visiting other countries, you usually are not provided with a list of items that are prohibited, especially items such as mobile phones. One of the things that he does have with him, is a copy of George Orwell’s 1984, which Delisle thinks is the perfect piece of literature to have when visiting a c...