Blankets: An Illustrated Novel

AUTHOR: Thompson, Craig

ARTIST: Craig Thompson (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Top Shelf Comics

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2003

Publication History

Craig Thompson’s first graphic novel, Goodbye, Chunky Rice (1999), recounted the adventures of a pet turtle on the run. In terms of inspiration and subject matter, the author and illustrator stayed closer to home for his second graphic novel, the largely autobiographical Blankets.

Thompson’s story about a developing artist’s midwestern childhood is based on events in his life growing up in rural Wisconsin, as the eldest son in a devoutly religious family. First published as a hardcover edition in 2003, the expansive Blankets was subsequently reprinted in best-selling paperback editions. At 582 pages, it is among the longest graphic novels published as a single volume. As the book’s sole author and illustrator, Thompson has received numerous awards in categories that honor both his storytelling skills and his artistry. In 2004, Blankets was one of Library Journal’s Top Ten Young Adult Books; a year later, it appeared on Time magazine’s list of Ten Best Graphic Novels.

Plot

Blankets is a Künstlerroman, a literary work that traces the development of an artist from childhood through adolescence to young adulthood. Thompson shares his first name with his protagonist, Craig, and depicts him in various scenes from his formative years. Events play out against a backdrop of institutions—church, school, and family—that thwart the budding artist’s creativity. Various authority figures deem Craig’s talents sinful and wasteful. Craig must overcome numerous obstacles, both external and internal, that impede his development as an artist; above all, he must remain true to his calling. Ultimately, his story is a testimonial about human endurance, the balm of love, and the power of artistic expression.

The story of Craig’s childhood, maturation, and emergence as an artist unfolds in nine chapters. The central event in chapter 1, titled “Cubby Hole,” results from a fight between brothers over bedcovers. As a punishment, the younger brother, Phil, is locked overnight in a dark cubbyhole by their strict father. Craig, now the sole occupant of the bed, hears Phil’s cries but is unable to rescue him. Interspersed in this episode are memories of other scenes of bullying that Craig experiences at the hands of teachers, classmates, and parents. When a teenage babysitter molests the young brothers, Craig’s guilt derives again from his inability to protect Phil. In response to these traumas, Craig finds solace in art, nature, and religion. Among the few joyful scenes of childhood presented in Blankets are those that show the brothers drawing together or playing outside in the snow. Art offers Craig an escape from reality through the exercise of his imagination; the natural world provides him an escape from human institutions; and for a time, religion offers him the promise of a happy afterlife.

The second chapter, titled “Stirring Furnace,” refers literally to the insufficient heating unit in the farmhouse in which Craig is reared. Metaphorically, the title alludes to his developing sexuality and to the origins of his relationship with Raina, a girl he meets at winter Bible camp. While playing hooky from scheduled activities—the skiing they cannot afford financially and the revival sessions they cannot embrace intellectually—the two form a bond. The divisions among high school cliques are heightened in this setting. Craig and Raina recognize the hypocrisy of young Christians who exclude others even as they sing about fellowship. Following their experience at camp, Craig and Raina, who live in different states, continue their relationship through the exchange of letters, drawings, and poems.

Chapters 3 through 7 chronicle Craig and Raina’s developing friendship and love. When Craig visits Raina in Michigan for two weeks, he encounters a different family structure, one more welcoming but also fraught with complications. Her parents’ separation places much of the burden and joys of caring for two older Down syndrome children upon the young teen’s shoulders. Raina’s older married sister, Julie, also depends on her for babysitting. These responsibilities keep Raina from attending high school regularly. On a rare visit to her school, the outsider Craig is surprised by Raina’s popularity. His jealousy increases when her behavior at a party conflicts with his own values: Craig does not smoke or drink. During the day, Craig assists Raina with her family responsibilities, and at night, when others are out of sight, the teens engage in intimate, but mostly innocent, physical encounters. Raina presents Craig with a quilt, a gift she made by hand, and eventually the two make love in its folds.

Chapter 8, titled “Vanishing Cave,” finds Craig returning home to the same circumstances he left: critical adults and ostracizing peers. Touched by Raina’s genuine love for her siblings, Craig reengages with Phil by expressing interest in his drawings, a pastime they had shared as younger children. Although Craig tries to sustain his love for Raina, the distances between them, geographic and emotional, eventually prove insurmountable, and they break up.

The final chapter, titled “Foot Notes,” provides a glimpse of Craig’s life after his relationship with Raina. He has left his rural home to work in the city and to enroll in art classes. A visit home at Christmas affords him the opportunity to reflect upon his early life. With magnanimity, Craig accepts the comforts of family rituals, the joy recalled in memories of his first love, and the possibilities afforded by young adulthood. The final scenes depict him joyfully planting footsteps in blankets of fresh fallen snow.

Characters

•Craig, the protagonist, is an aspiring artist who narrates and illustrates his life from childhood through young adulthood.

•Raina, an aspiring poet, is Craig’s first love.

•Phil is Craig’s younger brother.

•Craig’s parents are devout Fundamentalist Christians and authoritarian in their parenting.

•Raina’s parents are separated, which intensifies the stress of Raina’s home life.

•Ben and Laura are Raina’s adopted brother and sister. Both have Down syndrome.

•Julie is Raina’s older sister, who has escaped home by marrying young. She is Sarah’s mother.

•Dave, a dentist, is Julie’s husband and Sarah’s father.

•Sarah is Julie and Dave’s baby, for whom Raina frequently provides care.

Artistic Style

Thompson illustrates his life in a series of fluid, black-and-white drawings, most of which are contained in squares in semitraditional comic-strip format. While the drawings are realistic, occasional deviations represent Craig’s dreamscapes, nightmares, and fantasies. Drawings that depict the childhood artistic endeavors of Thompson’s main character are juvenile in execution, distinguishing them from more mature illustrations. In certain sections, Thompson utilizes black space to evoke emotional voids; in others, he exceeds frame boundaries to depict the emotional overload of a character. In some scenes, frames are abandoned entirely, and the illustrations are spread outward, suggesting that the story cannot be contained at that point.

Thompson’s black-and-white technique works well in depicting the snow-covered terrains and dark skies of midwestern winters. On a symbolic level, the illustrations reflect the truisms of Craig’s Fundamentalist upbringing, providing clear demarcations between good and evil, salvation and damnation, which his parents and church community insist are indelibly black and white. In a clever nod both to the comic-strip format and to the main symbol of his novel (blankets), Raina’s quilt is spread out upon one page by Craig’s hands; on the accompanying page, the characters themselves appear in various quilt squares, engaged in a conversation about the patches that unite both the covering and the young lovers.

Themes

In Blankets, Thompson creates an intimate story inspired by events in his own youth, one marked by rejection, loneliness, and despair as well as acceptance, connection, and joy. For older readers, Craig’s story may recall their own adolescent angst. Younger readers may be experiencing their own painful adolescences even as they read Thompson’s account. In either case, Blankets offers a message of hope for the future. However painful childhood and adolescence may appear in actuality or in retrospect, Thompson suggests that adulthood offers a fresh start. Like an untouched blanket of snow or a blank sheet in a sketchbook, two images that appear in the novel, adulthood affords the opportunity to make a new mark. In contrast to many novels for young adults that idealize childhood, Thompson offers the reverse. For any child who has ever felt or been made to feel like a social outcast, this tale of survival is full of promise for a better adulthood.

The chief motif in the novel is drawn from its title. Blankets in the story are both literal and metaphorical. They are coverings that unite young brothers in adventurous play and ensnare them in battles, real and imaginary. Blankets are also fragments of cloth pieced together by hand that unite young lovers. When Craig destroys the artifacts of his relationship with Raina, he burns letters, photographs, cassette recordings, and drawings. The one item he cannot discard—though it too is a painful reminder of what he has lost—is the quilt Raina gave him, under which they comforted each other and explored their nascent sexualities.

Like the fabric scraps that contain Raina’s early memories, Craig’s drawings capture his imaginative escape from childhood woes and form another type of protective blanket. Additionally, blankets of snow alter the winter landscape; they cover the roughness of the terrain and create a canvas upon which first the brothers and then the young lovers create snow angels. As Craig philosophically observes, “How satisfying it is to leave a mark on a blank surface,” whether that surface be snow or craft paper or the page of memory. While these blankets certainly entertain and comfort, Thompson reminds readers that they can also entangle and suffocate. For these reasons, a heartbroken Craig places Raina’s quilt in a box for safekeeping. When the emotional wounds of his lost first love have healed sufficiently, he is able to revisit the memories the quilt’s squares contain.

Blankets also recounts Craig’s struggles with faith and doubt. As Craig develops a mature understanding of his own spirituality, he questions the narrow perspectives of his Fundamentalist upbringing. In one poignant scene in a Sunday school classroom, Craig announces he will honor God in heaven by drawing pictures of His creations, and the teacher dismissively ridicules his vision of the afterlife. The inquisitive artist forges ahead in his faith journey nonetheless. As a teenager, Craig interrogates his minister on the problems posed by literal interpretations of the Bible, a scene reminiscent of an adolescent Jesus debating with rabbis in the temple. The underprepared minister suggests that Craig, whom he feels has a calling for the ministry, attend a Bible college to seek the answers. Instead, Craig leaves both his church and his Bible. Abandoning his childhood religion allows Craig, now a young adult, the freedom to reflect upon rituals of faith and family from a distance. Returning home for a holiday visit, he appreciates the solaces such practices afford. His spiritual journey suggests that one can lose one’s religion but gain one’s faith.

Impact

Since its publication in 2003, minor controversy has surrounded Blankets. Complaints about Thompson’s depictions of adolescent sexuality and Fundamentalist Christianity have caused some libraries to remove the work from their young-adult sections. Nonetheless, Blankets’ overall positive message about surviving a difficult childhood, its expression of the joys and heartaches that accompany a first love, and its compelling illustrations have contributed to the book’s increasing popularity and regard. Efforts to keep the book out of the hands of young-adult readers have not been successful. Blankets appears on recommended reading lists for high school and college students, and its appeal for both young-adult and adult readers endures.

Further Reading

Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006).

Clowes, Daniel. Ghost World (2001).

David B. Epileptic (2006).

Van Lente, Fred, and Ryan Dunlavey. The More Than Complete Action Philosophers! (2009).

Bibliography

Chenowith, Emily, and Jeff Zaleski. “Blankets.” Review of Blankets, by Craig Thompson. Publishers Weekly 250, no. 33 (August 18, 2003): 60-61.

Fiske, Amy. “Blankets.” Review of Blankets, by Craig Thompson. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 48, no. 2 (October, 2004): 178-179.

Flagg, Gordon. “Blankets.” Review of Blankets, by Craig Thompson. Booklist, June 1, 2003, p. 1724.