The Cigarette Rhetorical Analysis

Chapter Analysis
The Cigarette (pages 111-117)

Emmy Mendez, Cole Meeden, Ian Masui, Will Lalande

In the chapter The Cigarette by Marjane Satrapi, there are many literary elements that the author uses to intrigue the readers such as graphic weight, speech bubbles and the use of the fore, middle and background. The author uses these elements to expedite a greater understanding and to capitalize upon certain panels. Speech bubbles are used to indicate and direct the reader to the message and tone the characters are speaking in. Tone is a necessity to the makeup of any novel because it informs the reader in which manner something is being said out loud, to one’s self, yelling, or in their own head. On page 111 the author shows

In panel 7, she used dark shading on her mom and moved her between the back and middle ground and moved Marjane to the front with a facial expression that demonstrated how she felt at that specific time and space of the event unfolding. But yet, instead kept her mom's words like Marjane was still listening to the discussion going on. It was as if the author wanted us to read what she was saying while at the same time feel what was going on in Marjane’s mind and focus the attention on that. Then in Panel 9, the author again moved her mom to the background and shadowed her body figure and instead of using words in a text bubble there is a question mark, showing that her mom is confused. The facial expression of Marjane looks angry and fed up with the “dictator” of the house, referring to her mother. The author showed this anger to give reason for Marjane's yelling and screaming about how she hates that her mom is controlling her

The pages layout only has four panels that each impact the viewer due to their eye catching size alone. As you delve deeper, panels two and three in the middle are predominantly shaded and heavily consolidating the graphic weight onto the middle of the page setting the reader up for a gloomy mood. Panel one stands out in that it contains imperative hand placement, a stern hand pointing and directing the crowd as they show their support. This capitalizes on the aggressive nature of the group. The staging and set up as seen in panel two provide depth moving from foreground to background. The foreground is the focus of the panel with Marjane shuffling down the stairs whose definite destination is a mystery, and whose mystery will live as the stairs continue on. In panel three the use of shadows off of the graffiti artists carry on the more mysterious and unknown vibe from previous panel. This time the panel proves to be an enigma to the viewer because of the shadows natural anonymity. Panel four uses an almost minute detail that contributes largely to the overall scene. This small detail is Marjane in the upper left hand corner as she is stricken by the phrases she took literally in her