Essay on the Cartoon Art of Lynda Barry

Cartoon art is the central theme of the piece of art and explores how Barry and her friends contributed to the development of cartoon art as a career. Despite starting off doing cartoon work as a hobby, Barry eventually started making a living out of writing comics for newspapers. The story explores the different challenges that Barry experienced as she launched her career in cartoon art.

Friendship

The theme of friendship is highly highlighted in the piece of art as it establishes how the environment in which Barry grew up had an effect on her approach to life and people in her life. During her young days, Barry was a loner and could stay at school alone until everyone left the school before she could go home. Barry all along her life had difficulties maintaining friends because they did not understand that she was different. Barry moved to Chicago to Wisconsin where people were more eccentrics and did not judge her from the way that she looked. It is in Wisconsin that Barry met Groening when she moved to Chicago and met Kawula whom she married.

Aesthetic beauty of the environment

The theme of the beauty of the natural environment is emphasized at different levels throughout the writing of being Lynda Barry and notes that Barry loved nature in its natural form and it was a significant inspiration for her work. The description of Barry`s home emphasizes on the beauty of environment in which Barry lived in the quiet suburbs where she could watch the landscapes. Barry also has a good relationship with her dogs, and it is revealed that in her comics she uses her dogs and real life experiences to create comics.

Authors style

Flashback narrative

The author style of writing is a narrative flashback in which the author seeks to recreate the events and moments he spent with Lynda Barry with the aim of creating an image of Lynda Barry in the mind of the reader. Groening shows his encounter first encounter with Barry when they first met and how she embraced him which shows that Barry was friendly. Another flashback is used to describe the farm that Barry and her husband Kawula was living and the landscape of the town.

Groening uses symbols and metaphors at different instances to further create a vivid picture of Lynda Barry. For instance, Groening uses figurative speech to create the picture of the old pickup she uses to visit Lynda Barry and an allusion is created on how the truck was slow to emphasize that the truck was very old. On a bright fall morning, I was back in Wisconsin headed for Barrys farm when I found myself behind an old pickup. The author seeks to create an allusion of the pickup and the terrain at the time when he was visiting Barry.

Response to the text

The text is a flashback narrative that seeks to create a vivid image of the life of Lynda Barry and helps the reader to experience the authors moments in first hand. This method aids the reader to understand the environment, times and context in which the author met with Lynda Barry and how Lynda Barry and Groening affected each other.

The text can create a good understanding of the author and Lynda Berry relationship and an in-depth understanding of Lynda Barry work and what influenced her to become a comic artist. Change is a theme that is well developed by Groening in the article being Lynda Barry. The author shows that change is inevitable and describes over time how life has changed and brought Barry and him to different cities and places. However, through comic arts, the author and Barry seems connected and despite marrying Kawula when Groening visits Barry seeing her reminds him of their teenage and when they were young adults.