The Spiral Cageby Al Davison

Members: Neil Wilson, Taehun Bang,

Leah Eke

Intro – Al Davison

• Comic book writer and artist• Born in New Castle, England• Now resides in Coventry• Best known for ‘the Spiral Cage’• Born with Spina Difida

Plot

• Hardship of Al Davison’s life, born crippled with multiple symptoms that labelled him handicap. It is a story of how his passion and strong will overcame hardships and obtained happiness.

• There were also doubts on his disability(over exaggerated maybe?)

Spina Bifida

• ‘Distortion of left hip caused by malformation of the lateral surface of the iliac bone’

• ‘Severely distorted both femurs…’• ‘As in such severe cases as this he will be

paralyzed from the waist down…’• ‘We can’t even say he will survive this first

operation. He is literally a ‘hopeless case’’(Al Davison, the Spiral Cage, page 14)

Purpose

• Purpose of this memoir is to encourage those who are labelled or told they are abnormal to beat through the hardship, and to show everyone deserves happiness

• Also for the story teller to tell the audience about his childhood and how he became the man he is today

Al Davison, Page 32, 33

Themes

• Idea of this graphic memoir is to let the audience feel the mistreatment that people with disability receive and to show their thoughts and desires for happiness is just like everyone else’s.

• Also to show that no matter how you are born, with effort and motivation, impossibility is just a word that haven’t been proven wrong yet

Structure

• For some it was hard to follow due to comic book structure.

• It seems as by going back and forth between child hood and adulthood, it shows the impacts and development from both times. Also by dividing into chapters with each chapter categorizing a specific time of his life, it makes the audience slowly relate/empathize with the character. Also each chapter has second title to describe the theme of the chapter from both his childhood and adulthood

Voice and tone

• The section in the beginning of the book where he is a child and Al Davison chooses to show what happened when he told his mother that some day soon he would be walking, was done perfectly. The smoothness of how each frame connected, the emotion shown not only in the verbal contexts but the grouping of the images he chose to use. At that age there is no way he could have remembered those details, but by getting secondary information from his family members he would have been able to piece together a smooth story.

• Tone of the narrator is calm and not too emotionally bent on the experience yet explains as the events occurred. Tone of each sub characters extremely clear; mam – worrisome and willing to make sacrifices for her son, friends during childhood – didn’t treat him any differently because of his disability, bullies – should die

Significance of title

• He uses more black in the book during this times he is struggling most and has the most disjointed out of place story aspects. This too of course is a chose so that the reader can visually see and get the mood of the plot before even reading anything. Most times there are very few words. That is the benefit to graphic novels. you want the visuals to tell the story not the words. Much like how a photographer uses photos as a narrative with out any text.

• (Al Davison, title page)

Historical, social and cultural context (3 aspects)

• Spacka: Term used in England for the word ‘retard’ throughout history, Buddhism: finding enlightenment within oneself to become the stage ‘Buddha’, Cultural reference of belief of super hero (Superman and Batman references)

• (Al Davison, Page 67)

How everyone in the group relates to memoir (theme, characters, plot)

• Leah Eke, Neil Wilson: Couldn’t really relate• Taehun Bang: As someone who attend school to become a

good story teller, it is an amazing story he told of his life. I can relate with the theme and plot of the story in sense of being alienated; due to racism and difficulty of language barrier first time I arrived in Canada. As for relating to characters, out of everyone in the memoir I could relate the best with Al’s friends during his childhood, helping him to walk and being friends regardless of difference. I was vice president of ‘Best Buddies’ program that is similar to a big brother program, for two years.

Outstanding scenes

• Page 28: Attempts of walking• Page 32: Al proving the words impossible and

hopeless wrong by walking towards his mother and doctor

• Page 77: Al’s finally over coming his disability of ‘not being able to walk’/’can’t walk properly’ by destroying all his walking equipment

• Page 118: Finding love

Characterization• The way every sub characters were portrayed simply with

their actions and reactions showed if they respected Al, if they thought they were better, if they equally treated Al regardless of disability, and also showed their roles in Al’s life; as positive or negative figure that influenced Al to be a better man in the end. Also the way Al is portrayed differently in each chapter, in both childhood and adulthood sense.

• Beginning – Childhood: hopeful, motivated, nothing could put him down. Adulthood: hopeless, scary, questionable of what he is doing at his age.

• Rise of interest – Childhood: showed atmosphere of his daily life. How he was picked on, in what sense it made a vivid memory in his mind. Adulthood: Shows his love affair, his circle of friends, how he relates to people. Kind of gives hope for the audience and gives the feeling of empathy.

• Climax – Childhood: bullied extremely, makes audience feel regret for mistreating anyone, shows the ugliest sense of humanity. Adulthood: Shows achievements through belief and hard work. Beats the disability with passion and finds peace with his belief.

• End – Childhood: The only part I was confused and wondered the representation of abstractness of the art and his imagination. Adulthood: Even though he is portrayed as ‘normal’ in the end, in mindset of the audience he is more than that due to the life he lived and showing how he beat all the obstacles.

Images

• As art students, we looked down on the style of the art before reading it. However by the end of the memoir, we realized the style also has representation of ugliness it was trying to tell. Truly magnificent

• Neil: Illustration, Taehun: Animation, Leah: Photography

Action

• Truly glad he learned martial arts to protect himself. None of us could imagine picking on someone with a disability, yet people in the memoir picked on him just BECAUSE he has disability. Actions throughout the memoir go from saddle happiness like playing with friends to violence and how people mistreated him beyond our imagination.

Colour

• Black and White. Colour of the book itself is terrific representation of the story in ways that it is mix of warm colors and cold colors and majority of the book being black. Warm representing the warmth he received from friends and family, cold representing the sadness he received from people’s words and actions, black representing evil within people.

• (Al Davison, title page)

Annotated Bibliography

• Davison, Al. The Spiral Cage. Los Angeles: Active Images, Astral Gypsy Press, 2003. N. pag. Print.

• Buddhist Scripture• Muhammad Ali saying

The End