The Quitter Section 3: "Words, Words, Words..."

Written Parallel/Contrast

Harvey says, "I really felt peaceful and relaxed on those Friday nights and looked forward to them so much" (40).
Harvey says, "By Friday, I was so shook up, I couldn't get out of bed...I was too nervous.

In high school, Harvey feels no pressure on his Friday nights and is able to enjoy this time and his life without worrying too much.  However, when he enters the work force a few years later, he is such a wreck that even on Fridays he can't relax.

Visual Parallel/Contrast

Shown are the two shots where Harvey is not wearing a shirt.  Both times he is in bed.  The first time, however, he is lying face up clutching the sides and the bed is unmade.  Also, the picture (or maybe it's a mirror) above his head his cracked, and there are papers all over.  This picture shows how disorderly his life is.  However, the next shot, when his life is a little more put together (he is in college and doing well), shows Harvey lying casually on his bed.  This time, though, he is lying the opposite way and the bed is made beneath him.  Also, you can clearly see the picture above his bed, and the room is very orderly with the bookcase and no papers (except the envelop he was opening).  So the same setting, shows two very different depictions of Harvey.

"Words, Words, Words..."

For the most part, Pekar uses boxes, which suggests this is his present voice narrating the past.  One moment, however, he tells through dialogue (which is represented by circular text boxes.  This is when he goes to the "shrink" and gets kicked out of the Navy.  He could've easily chosen to use a box hear and just say "They told me I wasn't fit for the Navy," but instead he chose to put this dialogue in there.  In this dialogue Harvey expresses his worries about the future and he thinks he will never succeed, so by putting in dialogue here, Pekar shows us his thoughts at the time, rather than just summing it up in his present voice.

Film Noir Comparison

L.A. Confidential Shot

Double Indemnity

Above are two shots from two different film noir movies.  The first is from L.A. Confidential, a neo-noir film from 1997, and the second is from Double Indemnity, a film noir from 1944.  A common element in film noir movies is the idea of the purity and innocence of a small town versus the evilness of a big city.  Both of these movies toy with this idea.

In the first shot from L.A. Confidential, we see for the first time a picture of Lynn Bracken's room.  Prior to this, the film kind of sets her up as a "femme fatale," an evil seductive woman, but here, we see a much different picture.  This shot of her bedroom shows us her soft side, with the embroidered pillows, the nice curtains, and the fancy table.  This is not the bedroom that you would expect a hooker to have.  The most interesting detail of this picture is the Arizona pillow.  On this, you can see that the presumably small town of Bisbee, Arizona is labeled, implying that this is her hometown.  This gives the viewer the idea that deep down, she is just an innocent small town girl, as opposed to Phyllis from Double Indemnity, who is from Los Angeles.

The shot below, which is a long shot from Double Indemnity, also features a small town person.  The man in the middle is from Medford, Oregon.  How do we know that?  Well, he says it in almost every sentence, so clearly the film makers want us to know that detail.  In this shot, he is sitting down and looking up at Mr. Keyes, showing respect.  He is dressed formally and is holding a cigar in one hand and paperwork in the other.  All these details show is that this guy is trustworthy and well intentioned.  Walter Neff, on the other hand, who lives in and is likely from Los Angeles, is standing behind, looking nervous and covering his face.  He clearly feels guilty and his hiding something.

These two shots support the notion that living in a big city corrupts people, whereas there is something more pure about being from a small town.

The Quitter Section 2: Images

Written Parallel

Harvey says: "But I buckled down to work, boy.  I didn't want to embarrass [my father]" (15).
Harvey says: "When my father came to take me to the new place,...I was suddenly embarrassed by him" (7).

As a child, Harvey was embarrassed of his foreign father, but as he matures, he doesn't want to let him down, although he still doesn't agree with his ways.

Visual Contrast

Throughout the novel, I have been noticing a sharp distinction to how black people and white people are depicted in the illustration, and I've found this difference to be borderline racist.  On page 5 at the bottom, there is an angry mob of black people who look like savages.  Their faces are distorted and they look sort of barbaric.  Whereas, on page 28, when Harvey's classmates are complimenting him on his fighting skills, all the "extras" that are white look very respectable and like nice humans.

Images

Here we have a long shot of Harvey in the boys locker room after he beat up a kid.  Much like many of the shots we've looked at, the most interesting part of the shot does not happen in the middle frame.  Instead, the guy lying on the ground is roughly at the intersection on the bottom right frame (if you can picture a tic-tac-toe grid on the image) and the middle frame is relatively unoccupied.  There are people in the middle, but they are in the back and clearly less important.  This shot I'd argue is slightly a low angle shot.  We can see Harvey's whole body (on the right) but we are below his face so we are looking up at him.  This makes him appear bigger and he is towering over the guy on the floor who he just beat up.

The Quitter Section 1: Frames

On the third page, Harvey's mother says, "African Americans and Jews should stick together, since we're both persecuted minorities."

Later in the section, Harvey wonders, "Why would she want me to give up just because I was in the minority?"

These quotes both show how important it is to Harvey's mother to not me in the minority.  She thinks African-Americans and Jews should side with each other because that will give them more numbers, and she tells Harvey he should join the other side because he is outnumbered.


After watching film noire, a visual parallel that I noticed right away while reading this book was the use of shadows.

In both of the fight scenes shown above, Harvey's opponents are shown only as shadows.  This gives the reader the idea that these people are insignificant, nameless people that are dark and mean.  They shadow over Harvey in the upper shot, as if them have power over him, but Harvey is grasping and finally beating the shadow in the shot below.

Also, this book features many different shapes and sizes of frames.  Visually, the frames that stick out first are the large frames with little text interrupting them.  One of the biggest frames in the section is shown above, where the shadows of his opponents stand over Harvey.  This is a crucial shot because it shows that Harvey is powerless against the many people, which relates to the written parallel I found that has to do with strength of numbers and minorities.  The other biggest frame is Harvey shown covering his ears, trying to block out his Mom's favorite candidate and a communist flag, showing that he doesn't want to hear to opinions of his mother because they are unpopular in American culture.

One interesting thing I noticed the author did with frames was on page 11, the last page we read.  This page is divided up into 6 squares and is perfectly symmetrical.  Harvey is placed on the right third of the frames on the left, and the left third of the frames on the right, so when you look at them together, It looks like 3 people connected by the frames.  This shows two sides of Harvey.  On the left side, he is in the dark, angry and his face is bruised, whereas on the right, his face is clean and well lit, and he looks confused.  This page shows the effect of how frames can take on a different meaning when they are placed next to each other.

Also, when a page has many small frames, things seem to be going by quicker and it is easier to glance over them, as they are not the most important part.  On the other hand, when the frames are big, although there is less text, things seem to move slower.

If I were to make chapters in the book, I'd end the first chapter after Harvey wins a fight and gets accepted into a new group of people because it has a good narrative arc (Harvey is faced with a conflict and he overcomes that conflict).  I'd title this section "Minority Race" because it captures the idea that minorities are racing to get out of their situation and join the majority.  The African-Americans have done this, as they have found a neighborhood where they could be the majority, and Harvey does this too in the end when he finally fits in.

The next section (that I've made) starts with Harvey asking his mother for advice, but then realizing that she is wrong, and he'd have to do things his own way.  All people have this realization that their mother is not always right as they grow up, so I'd title this section "Independence," as he is becoming independent from his mother.

Frames

In the picture above, the bunk beds act as a frame to the teddy bear, who lies at the intersection of the top right frame.  To the left, there is another character in the background, who seems less important to the scene since he is farther away.

 This is a picture taken of my grandparents.  While they are in the foreground and are clearly the focus of the picture, I think the background (buildings in Chicago) is just as important.  This picture would look way different and send a different message if the background were mountains, or a lake, or a football game.

Here is another picture of my teddy bear, who is placed in the lower right frame of the shot.  In the center and everywhere else in the photo is far less interesting, but it provides context that the bear is in its comfortable home.

The teddy bear here is framed between ordinary kitchen items.  The bowl of fruit, oven mitt, counter, pot, and television (who doesn't have one of those in their kitchen nowadays?) surround the bear to place him in his own frame.

I love this shot because it shows the teddy bear has power over my dog.  This is because this low angle show makes the bear look big.  We know it is low angle because in the top third of the picture we can see the cabinets above.  The middle frame is relatively unoccupied (just the bear's big forehead), but the real action takes place at in the bottom third where both the dog's and the bear''s face are.

 This picture to me is extremely interesting.  The whole right third is lit up by lightning.  The middle third is dominated by the Sears Tower (or I guess the Willis Tower), which is sort of framed by the other buildings, and in the top left, there is yet another light (the sun).  Also, in the bottom left, there is the neon light of a restaurant.  Besides that though, the rest of the picture is very gloomy and dark.

This picture to me is interesting because a few of the lines of the 9 frames are drawn by items in the picture like the foul pole and the sign.  The sign on top is interesting to me because although it is in the foreground, it is not the most interesting thing in the picture.  It just serves as a bearing to let the viewer know that this is the perspective of a fan in the stands.

 This picture isn't from this week, but I decided to upload it because it is maybe the coolest picture I have every taken with an iPhone camera.  The person is in the top right frame.  In the foreground, there is water splashing up from the motor, informing the viewer we are on a boat, and in the back in the top third, there are trees and a house, telling us we are on a small lake.