Asterios

I like the story. The story has a lot of reflection elements in it. I especially admire how the author illustrated Asterios’ attitude towards his wife in graphics. It is very hard to illustrate but he got it spot on! It is my favorite scene of the entire story.

The story is also well told with a frequent use of contrast, on the character himself and in the visual effect. At first, the character was introduced as a lazy person lying in bed in a small and dirty room. Then it introduced the character’s background as a successful architect from Oxford, surrounded by the intellectuals. Given the background shows such a big contrast between the character’s past and present, which made people feel sympathy for the character. 

The author is also very effective in depicting the disgusting sense of the environment the character was in. The scene such as meeting the homeless guy enjoy picking noses, and the one of a woman vomiting in the subway station were depicted vividly. The vomiting scene especially, it was colored in yellow which contrast with the rest of the scene and drew people’s eye to it. The visual effect is so powerful that it makes me really feel the disgusting atmosphere. 

It is a story that kept me reading till the end, and it’s interesting to see how the two scenes— past and present met together, and Asterios eventually met with his ex-wife again at the end. I like the story very much.