Final Reflection

     The graphic novel, New Kid used humor in insightful ways. Specifically, the pages labeled “Jordan’s tips for …” Craft uses these pages where Jordan is inserting his own voice and writing in a very humorous way. The pages are giving tips to simple everyday things such as, “Jordan’s tips for taking the bus.” The complexity and inner though process to each of these is humorous, it takes simple notions and makes them less simple in a humorous light, showing that there are complexities even in life’s simplicities. In “A Guide to Cafeteria Hierarchy” specifically, it is something the reader can relate to because everyone has had that high school experience of the cafeteria and its implied assign seating based on popularity. However, instead of explaining and drawing the cafeteria with humans, Craft (Jordan) uses animals, “Regular seniors (Wolves) get the window seats… The Upper-Class Black Table (Rhinos)… Juniors (Foxes) get their own section in the middle… Sophomores (Owls) sit closest to the food” (40). Craft chooses to use animals to show the cafeteria hierarchy to emphasize its ridiculousness. It is a relatable experience to almost every high schooler, yet we never stop to think how stupid it is that we group up like that. 

 

    This scene takes on the role of a larger point that Craft is trying to make about race throughout the book, that division based on physical attributes, grade, popularity, race ect. is a ridiculous social construct that should be questioned. The friendship between Jordan and Liam works this out in a lot of ways too. When Jordan goes to Liam’s house he asks him not to judge the expensive nature of his home. I think it’s interesting the way that Craft points out the judgement of status and class can go both ways, not just judging someone of a less high class than you but of a greater one too. Yet, Liam and Jordan have no problem overcoming the physical differences in race, class, and social status in their friendship, and the cafeteria, which Craft uses to represent society should have no problem with it either. Craft uses humor in his graphic novel to represent and explain tough societal issues such as this.

 

    On a different note, I have enjoyed studying humor this semester. As someone who (likes to think) that I am funny, I have never paid this much attention to how I am using my humor and what it working to do. I had never even really thought of humor as something that is working to do something, and I have realized that humor should always be working to do something. Whether it is as simple as cheering someone up or as complex as trying to solve some of life’s hardest mysteries. Through all the authors we have read this semester, I think one of the biggest things I have learned is that humor can create healing. I always hear people say that one of the most important qualities they are looking for in a partner or friend is that they must be funny. I guess I always just thought that was because it’s fun to have someone to make you laugh, but I now realize it is way larger than that. Humor represents intelligence, someone’s ability to take life’s tragedies and spin them, someone’s ability to open up and share love and fears in one, it holds both optimism and pessimism, humor allows for someone to heal and see the light at the end of the tunnel. After taking this course, I now understand why one of the most important qualities people look for in one another is a sense of humor.