Exams exist to evaluate. They tell teachers how well a
student has covered material, they tell the state if a person is skilled enough
to drive, and tell doctors about the fitness of an individual. In Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth,
a graphic novel by Chris Ware, inverts the normal usage of an exam. Instead of
evaluating the exam taker, the exam in the front cover of his comic is used to
tell the reader about what to expect within the comic, and how to interpret it
in reference to the title character Jimmy.
The “exam” poses questions that seem to judge the reader.
Personal questions, including the reader’s gender, relationship with his or her
father, and social ability in interacting with the opposite sex. While this
seems rather useless when first reading the book, it is actually the closest
thing to a dust-cover-blurb that the book has. These questions less for self-inflection,
but more for an explanation of what the title character faces. Within the first
half, the reader comes to see Jimmy’s personal failings, from his inability to
interact and connect with women, to his relationship with his absentee father,
all of which was explained to the reader by the Exam.
Looking at questions 6 and 7, both deal with connecting with
women. The interesting thing about both questions is that the answers do not
span a range of options as in traditional multiple choice (where you have good,
bad, and terrible answer selections), but instead see all the possible answers
as synonymous with one another. Question 6 asks “The presence of members of the
opposite and or attractive sex makes you feel a. weird, b. awful, c. terrified,
d. hopeless, e. like killing yourself”. All the possible answers are really the same thing,
and when taken into context about the true purpose of Ware’s exam, point to
show how Jimmy fails to connect with the women. He is simply too terrified to
do anything. Similarly, question 7 asks “The possibility of finding social and or
personal contact with members of the opposite and or attractive sex is a.
laughable, b. incomprehensible, c. all you ever think about, d. a, b, and c, e.
a, b, c, and d”. Once again, all the answers are really the same answer, and
all point to Jimmy’s inability to talk to women. Looking at page 13, where
Jimmy first interacts with Peggy, it’s clear that he has never been able to talk
to connect with her. Peggy sees him as more a nuisances than anything else,
while it’s clear that Jimmy wants a more personal connection. By viewing just
that one panel on page 13, it would appear that Peggy may have bee only busy,
but in context with the exam questions, it’s clear that Jimmy wants a deeper
connection. Within the novel, outside of Peggy and the ever-calling Mother,
there are female characters that are mentioned more than once. Outside of the Jimmy’s
mother, Peggy is the only female character mentioned more than once, and
without the context provided by the exam, Jimmy’s attraction, and failure to
act upon it, towards Peggy would not be so clear. Outside of Peggy, Jimmy can’t
even have a normal conversation with a woman, and his sexual visualizations of
them all fall apart. When talking with the fast-food cashier, he is unable to
coherently speak, stammers through his actual complaint, and pays again for a
burger he wanted fixed (Ware, 45). He later visualizes a sexual liaison between
the two of them, but he is unable to connect with her, and insults her as he
leaves (Ware, 49). In any normal reading, this pair of events would be chalked
up to bad luck, but in reference to the Exam, the reader is able to understand
that this type of reaction is commonplace in Jimmy’s life. Overall, because of
the information about Jimmy provided by the Exam, the reader is able to gain a
deeper sense of Jimmy’s character.
The exam also gives a very good summary on how to interpret
Jimmy’s actions towards his father. Question 10 asks “Your relationship to your
father could be best characterized as a. strained, b. distant”. This frame’s
Jimmy’s relationship perfectly. He doesn’t know his father, so he never had the
opportunity to explicitly like or dislike him, so distant is the most apt
description. Because of the frame provided by the exam, Jimmy’s reaction to
getting the letter in the mail from his father (Ware, 13) is understandable.
Shock, surprise, and confusion are all indicative of an absent father
son-relationship. Even when meeting his father, Jimmy does not know what to
say. Jimmy is unable to communicate well, and his father runs both sides of
most conversations (Ware, 47). Past this, it’s clear that Jimmy has some issues
with paternal abandonment, even going so far as to visualize patricide. On page
39, we see Jimmy dreaming about killing his father with a mug, right after his
father had sex with his mother. Earlier, on page 13, we see a younger Jimmy
attacking a man, while his mother looks on, the death of another father figure.
Tying to the paternal abandonment are the constant superhero references. Male superheroes
are an archetypical father figure, and in Jimmy’s imagination, the superheroes
are always dying or disappointing him. The first one jumps off a building
(Ware, 17), a second one falls off a table (Ware 178), another has sex with his
mother and leaving immediately (Ware, 5), and so on. The only positive superman
father figure is on page 99, where Jimmy projects the costume of superman on
the man who saved him. By putting the question about the reader’s relationship with
the father into the introduction, Ware is able to characterize the relationship
between Jimmy and his father more quickly than would have been revealed through
normal reading.
Most books put a teaser paragraph on the back cover or the
inside of the dust cover to entice the reader, and give them some information
that would lead to them actually reading the entire book. Chris Ware ignores
that custom, even commenting that the exterior was designed to hide the true
contents. Instead of the normal paragraph, Ware uses the Exam from the “General
Instructions” to tell the reader what types of topics will be included in the
book, and give an idea as to the mental, social, and emotional characteristics
of Jimmy, all of which serve to characterize the character better in context of
his actions.
Works Cited
Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. New York: Pantheon, 2000. Print.
2 comments:
Tom, you present several interesting arguments about the different exam questions in the instructions. I do think that you would benefit from describing a more explicit argument earlier on; proposing a detailed analysis of one particular question might have given strength to your paper. Nonetheless, each set of questions is defended appropriately, I just think that you could add strength if you stuck with a smaller subgroup of questions.
When you equate the feelings of 'awful','weird', etc, I think that you assert their overall nature quite fluidly. If you instead were to focus on the DIFFERENCES between such similar emotions, I think that you could make a case for why exactly Ware would choose to pick such similar descriptors. Think of times when you felt 'awful' versus times where you felt 'weird'. Ware might be trying to get us to distinguish between fairly similar emotions.
Overall, I think that your analysis of the exam questions is quite good. I especially like how you challenged its 'exam' status. It does seem more like a survey. If you were to add some about the possible reasons for the individual choices, I think you could narrow and strengthen your argument. I liked your paper.
Clever introduction. I don't know where it will lead, but it's an interesting start. I do think that the first couple paragraphs could have been compressed, though.
There is a risk of being too obvious when writing about Jimmy's inability to connect with women. You're going to some of the right places in the text, but there's a danger of belaboring the obvious. What does it mean, or why does it matter, that his utter ineptitude with women comes up at the very beginning (or technically, *before* the very beginning)?
Your material about Jimmy's relationship with his father isn't very production. It's not that you're wrong - it's just that it feels like you're jumping into another topic, and you're in the same situation as before. I mean, he obviously has trouble connecting with his father - does the introduction give us more than that? Why is it important that we're prepared for this aspect of the book.
One thing that disappointed me here is that you bring up page which makes it most obvious that Jimmy's sexual fixation and his problems with his father are related (hence, the homicidal fantasy that begins with his father having sex with his mother). Since you brought it up, and you're writing about both topics, I thought you'd bring them together in a way that doesn't quite happen.
You don't really have an argument at the end - affirming my feeling that this is more of an able summary and less of an organized argument than I might hope for.
Note that Dennis says some of the same things that I do from a somewhat different angle.
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