Reading “Marbles” was a new experience for me. I hardly ever read comics or graphic novels. Every time I try I lose interest so quickly. Maybe it’s because I get so distracted by the pictures and I don’t know what order to read things in. When that happens I get confused and just give up.
I didn’t give up on “Marbles” though. I wanted to see if I could get something out of it and I think I did. I thought this was an interesting way of writing a biography. Ellen Forney seems like a very interesting person and one thing I noticed is every time she’s speaking to her therapist, Karen, she always says something like; “That’s a lot.” Or “Meds”. Now, I’m only seeing Forney’s side of the story so it makes sense for he therapist to not be a likable character if Forney herself didn’t like her.
As a writer myself, in my experience, it’s natural for a writer to villainise dislikable people in their real life when writing a story. To finish my thought; I did not like her therapist because she seemed to want to control and tame Forney and basically turn her into a vegetable with the meds she kept recommending. Then again, this is from Forney’s point of view and for all I know she could be exaggerating the situation to make her readers sympathize with her.
I find it interesting that you had found comics or graphic novels confusing through both pictures and dialogue. Could the difference with Marbles had been that the pictures were a visual representation on how her mind was working? I do not think there could have been a better Medium besides her comic to portray her message and story.
I do agree that her therapist is not meant to be a liked/likeable character since she seems to have such a love hate relationship with her, but I don’t think it’s entirely negative because when she is down and needs to feel “safe” she finds that Karen in fact creates a “safe space” for her one that can not exist with others in the same way.
In conclusion I too did think that the therapist sounded a lot like a dictator in the way she was giving her prescriptions as though it would be Forney’s only way at grasping a “normal” life style. It was a bit true toward the end when Forney finally started to see the treatment as helped rather than hindering making for a better experience. Marbles is similar to The Shaking Women in that they both find comfort in acceptance at the end of the book and that in many ways is reassuring to us as readers as well.
Kaitlyn, I can see why you get confused when reading Marbles. A comic or a graphic novel would normally be my last resort if I go to purchase a book. After reading comics in this class I am now in love with reading it. For some reason I felt engage while reading. I wasn’t distracted by the picture nor was I bored. I kept in reading and reading but with a typical novel I usually fall asleep within the first 10 pages. Normally when reading a regular book you have to make up in your mind what exactly the speaker or the author trying to say but with a comic book everything is already drawn out for you. For example, in a regular novel it might say the house is covered in roses and vines. My brain now have to work hard to draw that picture for me to visualize. I hope I am not confusing anyone with my post.
I got the completely opposite idea about Karen; that Forney truly found a lot of comfort and support in her doctor. Like Ashlie mentioned, there was the idea that Karen gave Forney a “safe space” during their meetings (84), and I felt Karen’s comparatively sparse responses to Forney during conversations was more of the psychiatrist’s way of actively listening to her patient (and not a way of villainizing/creating dislike for Karen).
I think what Forney was trying to portray was the “actual war” that Jamison discussed in “An Unquiet Mind”: the internal war a patient has concerning medication (which comes out externally as a war between a doctor and her patient). On the one hand, patients don’t want to take drugs for many, many reasons (e.g., stigma against medication, financial reasons, not wanting the responsibility, not wanting to resign to the idea of needing drugs to mediate feelings, stigma against being “crazy,” etc.); on the other hand, a patient might actually need it to reign in their feelings (as Forney and Jamison did). One of the possible outcomes of not taking medication, unfortunately, is suicide, as Jamison mentions with one of her patients.
Importantly, I don’t think that Karen wanted to turn Forney “into a vegetable with the meds she kept recommending,” as you put it, Kaitlyn. As Forney explains in much of Chapter 7 (pages 182 onward), it’s the doctor trying to find the right medication for the patient to actually enable her to live a better life (i.e., not feel incredibly depressed and/or not feel maniacally out of control). I don’t think that Forney had a love-hate relationship with her doctor as much as she had a love-hate relationship with her disorder, and the graphic novel was a way to express the many mixed feelings regarding her condition.
Additionally, the dedication page opposite the publishing-info page at the beginning of the book reads, “dedicated with immense gratitude to my mother + to my psychiatrist,” so I’m pretty sure Forney does not dislike/want to villainize Karen.
I do agree with you where you mention about getting confused by with the images because sometimes I really had to think which picture I should follow next. The relationship that she had with her doctor been very unique because I felt like she only tell everything about her feelings, she did hide some things but mostly she told her everything. At some points I didn’t like her doctor also because she was giving her those medicines without even actually doing deep down and search for it if it is good to give her or is there any other way that will help her.