Rhetorical Analysis of a Comic

Aaron Stokke
Sadashivan – Representation

Smells like Home

Essays, novels, films, and music have always seemed to be the standard for expressing one’s self. Comics have never been considered as legitimate as some of these other forms of media, although perhaps they definitely should be. Take for example the comic “Common Scents,” by Lynda Barry. The comic tells the story of Barry as a child and her fascination with smells, particularly the unique smell of every individual house she entered. The creator utilized several interesting techniques to convey ethos, plot and morals in the comic.
Take for example, the first box of the comic. The creator early on establishes her ethos with the audience by portraying herself in a humorous way and choosing to write in the comic in very loose, curvy, and almost bubbly letters. The creator chose to represent herself as a red haired, freckled, awkward looking girl, with a bow and no fashion sense. This creates an ethos of being both innocent and weird. Let’s face it, the creator just makes herself look goofy in the first box. Anyone who is concerned with how one house on the block smells compared to another house on the block and why just has to be goofy.
By choosing to express this story as a comic strip, the creator was able to tell much of the story that may have taken several paragraphs to describe through just one drawn box. In the fifth box the creator is able to draw several characters doing several different things and relate how each of them is making a smell that contributes to the smell of the creator’s own home. Likewise, in the eighth box of the comic, the creator was able to show action through a still two dimensional drawing. In the story, the mother of a girl in the neighborhood seems to be addicted to spraying air fresheners. She is described in the caption as “the most disinfecting, air freshener spraying person that ever lived. The creator uses a drawing of one central figure, the air freshener lady, with her limbs transposed to several positions around her body spraying her famous air fresheners. Everyone has seen a figure like this before in comic strips; it gives the illusion of doing an activity either very often or very fast. In this case, the air freshener lady was probably spraying both fast and often.
Finally, the comic reveals its moral in the eighteenth and final box. The Grandmother is shown offering a plate of what is likely smelly food to the creator of the comic with a caption implying that the moral of the story is that the best smelling house on the block is always the house that you live in. The creator revealed more of the moral of the comic in the eleventh box of the comic. In this box the Grandmother sits the creator of the comic down and comforts her after the air freshener lady’s child criticizes the smell of not only her house, but also her. The Grandmother tells the creator that everyone smells, even snooty white women. The moral of the comic is that everyone is different, but it is these differences that make us unique. At the heart of these differences is family, and nothing is more important than being proud of and remembering your family.
There are a lot of hidden messages and morals in media all around us. They are present in photography, films, books, paintings, even in television ads and comic strips. It is important to look for these morals and hidden messages. Without hidden meaning, most media would not be worth paying any attention to.