putting on an Alice-like head scarf, makes him an object of ridicule for other
kids in the neighborhood. David’s response is to imagine his own escape into
an underground Wonderland.
These textual dynamics evoke considerable sympathy for David’s painful
situation and clear ethical judgments about the deficiencies of his parents and
his peer group. But Small’s skill with his black-and-white drawings, his diverse
panels and page layouts, and his overall mastery of the graphic medium pro-
vide an aesthetic dimension to the readerly dynamics that partially offsets
the dismal affective dimension of those dynamics. In addition, this aesthetic
dimension also serves as a tacit signal that, although we are focused on the
Portrait of the Young Artist in a Dysfunctional Family, that young artist
becomes the remarkable implied author whose rich communications we are
engaging with on every page.
The most egregious complications of the global instability involve the
responses of David’s parents to a growth on David’s neck when he is eleven.
It is diagnosed as a sebaceous cyst, but his parents do not have it taken care
of until three and a half years later. Their ethical deficiency becomes all the
more outrageous—and the corresponding affective responses to them and to
David all the more contrasting—because shortly after the initial diagnosis, his
parents go on a spending spree, purchasing a new car, furniture, and many
appliances. Conspicuous by their absence are any purchases for David.
Small’s account of the surgery and its aftermath highlights the emotional
and ethical deficiencies of his parents and maximizes the audience’s sympathy
for him. The cyst has morphed into cancer, which requires two operations.
David loses his thyroid gland and one of his vocal cords and gains the stitches
that give the memoir its title. Furthermore, in perhaps the most telling evi-
dence of their inability to empathize with David, to see the world from his
perspective, his parents decide not to tell him about the cancer. Even after
David later confronts them for not telling him, his father angrily replies, “You
didn’t need to know anything then . . . and you don’t need to know about it
now. That’s final!” (238).
Small uses multiple techniques to highlight the experiencing-David’s feel-
ings of being lost and abandoned and to deepen the audience’s sympathy for
him. Especially notable is a remarkable sequence of images that Small places
shortly after the ordeal of the operation. He depicts David’s dream of a bat
caught in the rain coming upon an umbrella whom it calls “Mama!” But rather
than sheltering the bat, the umbrella gets totally shredded by the rain, leav-
ing the bat at the mercy of the elements. Yet Small never has David explicitly
articulate that he is an unloved child. For example, when David awakens, he
only mutters to himself, “Crazy goddamn dream” (201).
54 • CHAPTER 2