Asterios Polyp. It took me quite
awhile to get into and understand this novel. I recently finished it after
reading the majority of it about thee fourths through a few weeks earlier. The
ending is still fresh in my mind: an asteroid hurling directly towards Hanna
and Asterios as they reconcile. Why this was interesting to me is in Concept
class, we are told to put our first drawing and last drawing next to each
other. There needs to be a significant difference. In Asterios Polyp it begins
with him having to leave his apartment due to a lightning strike. It ends with
a similar disaster, but this time he isn’t alone.
The entire arc of the storyline is his
journey of reconciliation with his ex-wife if it is looked at in this way. But
the journey is also an important part. Throughout the book he is trying to
understand how different people perceive the world. People see the world
differently, and there will be things certain people notice a lot and others
not at all. David Mazzucchelli demonstrates this by drawing different
characters in different styles. I found this to
be very clever, easy to understand, and interesting to look at. The book
is his journey of overcoming the fact that not everyone sees things the exact
same way – and that’s okay.
This is the moral story of the book in my opinion.
Not everyone is going to have the same opinion as you, or think that politics or what not as are
important as you do. It isn’t wrong for them to think that way, it’s just how
they think. Asterios was more logical, and Hana was more artsy. They divorced
because Asterios couldn’t understand the way she perceived the world. In the
end, they reconciled and all was okay. Although not with a last joke about
perception on whether it was an asteroid or a shooting star.
