Non-verbal Communication

            People often say that 93% of communication is nonverbal, which means that most of the communications comes from body language. Author David Small takes advantage of this when he writes his graphic novel Stitches: A Memoir, David Small uses his images in this graphic novel to describe situations that words simply cannot and he also uses the body language of the characters to show their real feelings.

            Even from the beginning of the book David Small tells the reader that his family had their own language that involved no words Small would even write out the sounds that their “language” would make, things like his mom slammed doors making “Whap” noises, his dad hit a punching bag making a “pocketa”, and his brother banged on drums with the sound “bum”. This “language” is repeated thought the graphic novel, when his family did this they were trying to communicate something, being angry, sad, anything that they did not want to talk about verbally with each other. Or when David Small is recovering from his surgery later on in the graphic novel, his mother tells him to stop messing with his stitches and he looks at her with a look that said “why do you even care” but he can’t actually say anything because of the surgery.  He also uses his images to show what his metaphors mean to him, for example when David Small explains how his mother’s silent anger was “like a black tidal wave” he then draws a picture of a tidal wave swallowing him and his brother whole.

            Another thing that David Small does in Stitches: A Memoir is that he uses his drawings when no words can be used to describe what his emotions are toward a specific situation. When David, the young David, went out and played as Alice and was chased back to his house he draws a sequence showing David and he almost looks defeated and he then goes to his drawing pad and he becomes lost in his own drawings and it takes the pain of it away. Another example is when David and his mother go and visit his grandmother David is left with his grandmother and she punishes him and drags him around pulls him up the stairs by his wrist and burns his hands. Throughout this sequence while David’s grandmother pulls him, the images of David Small’s face shows that he was genuinely afraid and in pain from what his grandmother was doing to him. Later on in the novel when Small starts to see a psychiatrist the discuss how David’s mother does not love him and when David and his psychiatrist are coming to an end of the conversation, David just breaks down and starts to cry and it shows that he is going through pure sadness.  He shows all of this without words and uses the images to show so much more emotions coming from David Small most of these things you could not get from only words on a page you have to actually be able to see it.

             David Small in Stitches: A Memoir does an amazing job of going past the only verbal form of communication, using only words to describe things and using images to show the pure emotion that could only be seen not told.