Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Book Review: Sense and Sensibility (New Media)

Bibliography

Austen, Jane, Nancy Butler, and Sonny Liew. Sense and Sensibility. New York: Marvel Illustrated, 2010. Print.

Summary

Sense and Sensibility is the story of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood who move across England with their mother and other sister after their father passes away. Their half brother and his wife all but force them out of their home and they must adjust to very different living circumstances. Elinor and Marianne face heartbreak and obstacles in love along the way, as well as cunning manipulations from family and friends.
Critical Analysis

This version of Sense and Sensibility is portrayed as a graphic novel, with illustrations that capture the events and emotions of the characters. The illustrations also set the time period and a location of the story as well as it gives the reader a fairly accurate portrayal of life during the Romantic period in England. For the most part, this version captures Jane Austen’s use of dialog in her original story, but due to the nature of graphic novels, much of the dialog had to be reduced, which at some times made the story confusing and unclear.
Strengths and Weaknesses

The strength of the graphic version of Sense and Sensibility is that it takes a classic novel and makes it more accessible to the young adult audience.  The major weakness of this version is that because there is so much dialog in this version, it takes away from the illustrations. This also made it hard to follow along with the story at times. Another weakness is that on the front cover, there is a beautiful illustration of Marianne and Elinor, but inside of the book, the illustrations were much different, the characters were more cartoon-ish and not as lovely.

No comments:

Post a Comment