Asterios Re-Reviewed

So for this assignment, I decided to choose Asterios Polyp as my main reading.  Asterios Polyp is a graphic novel by David Mazzucchelli and it revolves the life of Asterios Polyp, a professor and an architect of Greek and Italian descent at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The graphic novel began when Asterios survived the fire that hit his apartment. With a limited things that he has, he  decided to leaves the city with greyhound to the farthest city that he could afford with his limited money. That he has at that moment. After that he decided to get a job at the local auto mechanic in Apogee, the furthest town that he could afford. Here in Apogee, he started to get his life back together while staying in the auto mechanic’ Owner’s house. Here he remembers all his past life as a professor and his love life with his ex-wife. In his past life, it told a story of his achievement as a professor and how he began to get to know Hana, his soon to be wife. In the beginning of his marriage life, it was all happy and romantic. Hanna, who used to be a new professor at the Cornell University, is now being more active in her studio where he works on her statue after her marriage, whereas Asterios still teaches at the university. Their marriage began to crack when Willy Illium began to offer Hanna a job. Astonished by her conceptual design, he began a partnership with Hanna which makes Hanna become busier as she gets more and more jobs. As she gets busier, their romance started to fade and thus they ended their relationship. His days at the mechanic, with the owner’s family and community really changed him; the pinnacle is when he had his own fight with “himself” that caused an accident which led him to be brought to the hospital. In the hospital he decided to leave the city to get back to his wife.

In my opinion, this is quite an interesting graphic novel to read. The struggle that Asterios had been through during his relationship really brings a more depth into his character even more. It seems quite a sudden change in the beginning when we see how pitiful Asterios is, to how he used to be when he still was a professor. It is quite surprising that the proud, confident, architecture become a plain, unmotivated character that we become to know in the beginning. However, as the story dig deeper into his past life, we come to understanding on why there is such a gap in his personality which is because of his broken love life who it seemed to be a perfect before.

Asterios Polyp is a very beautiful graphic novel, the way the artist draw each character is very conceptual. We can see that the depiction of Asterios was more geometry and Hanna is more of an artistic shaded style. I guess it is to depict the nature of each character itself. In Asterios, we can see that he is more about the order and he is quite stiff and arrogant as he feels that he is a genius and he is quite proud of it, that is why he is depicted as the geometry shaped as it is stiff, solid and never change, just like the personality of him. Whereas Hanna’s style depict the artistic style which shows freedom and beauty, which is why it suits her style. and what makes it interesting in this graphic novel is that as they get to know each other, both style slowly merge into one, showing that both of them acknowledge each other and when they were committed into a serious relationship, there is no difference between them anymore and it shows in the art which shows no different between them at all. However, as the story progresses, when they were in a fight, we can see that the style that connect them together stars to fade away and their own style starts to come in again, showing that they soon began to crumble and becomes their own identity again which shows that they are no longer together. It is quite an interesting concept because through their style we become to know what is going to happen even without looking at their dialogue. So in a sense, the artist really successful in explaining that overall, I feel this is like a new fresh approach in drawing the graphic novel, or maybe it is just work for this graphic novel but overall this is an enjoyable read.

The other thing that I really like about this graphic novel is the use of color to show the emotion throughout the graphic novel. Here we can see in the beginning of the graphic novel, the color used in the beginning was blue, to introduced the main character’s main color and all of the sudden, it was changed to a more gloomy purple to show the difficult life that he has as his apartment being engulfed by the flame. It is also present as he board into the bus which takes him into the furthest city that he could afford. In the beginning, it may all seems so gloomy until he got into his dream, where he met his “brother” of his. What really interesting is that although Asterios seems quite troubled by the presence of his brother, the color depiction of this sequence seems off as it uses a lot of yellow, which contradict to how he feels whenever he met his brother. The yellow tinted color also used in the Asterios current condition as he works in the garage. I can understand that the yellow color depicted in this scene means hope or happiness, as it shows how peaceful Asterios Life is after he got a job at the garage. However, what perplexes me is that the artist uses the same yellow color to depict Asterios trouble with his brother. It makes me think that the color used as an irony to show how miserable his life is because of his brothers that keeps popping out inside his head. Or perhaps, I think too much and it only used because it best described the dream color.

However, out of all the beauty of this graphic novel has given me, what really threw me over is the ending. Until now I still can’t accept the concept of the ending.  Everything seems to be just fine. Asterios reflect on his former days and seeing that he has made a mistake that he decided to get back together with his wife. His ex-wife also incorporated some of the her knowledge that she got when she was with Asterios and it seems that she tries to embrace all of her knowledge that she got from her marriage life. Everything seems like it can lead to a happy ending which is that they are getting back together. However, the artist  just slams us with the presence of the asteroids itself. Even though it didn’t show us the ending, we can assume that they are tragically died in the asteroid crash. This is the ending that I was not expecting at all. In the beginning we can see how pitiful he is as he sees his house in engulf in the flame and how he tries to turn his life around in the story, and throughout his journey to the fathest city, we can see how Asterios finally finds his answer to his life and from there we started to cheer for him so that he can win back his ex-wife heart. I would assume that finally all his circumstances might be better off towards the end as we sees how intimate Asterios and Hanna towards the end of ths story.  but in the end it was not the case at all, they are far from getting back on each other as they are assumed to be dead because of the crash.  

It kind of gives me the idea that not every story is a happy ending story but deep down I really crave for that happy ending. I have seen enough despair in his life that I really cheer for Asterios, and when it was shown that he is about to get killed, it just gave me a headache for a moment.  Is there a motive that the graphic novel artist wants us to learn from this graphic novel, like there are no such things as a happy ending, or not all things we could get, even how hard you tried, because your fate is in the hands of the man up there? or perhaps the artist is just want us to focus on the beauty of the journey of Asterios himself rather than the ending? it could be a possibility, judging on how fast the ending might seems and how the artist just slam us with the unexpected ending as the beauty of life itself the journey on what we have learned.

Overall this is an enjoyable read, though the ending kind of threw me off. But the journey of him in Apogee, reflecting of his past is really something that I really enjoys. The graphic is beautiful and though the ending might not be for everybody, this is still one piece of beauty.