Images

Images
Tangles uses vivid imagery through text manipulation, facial details, artistic exaggerations, and blank space.

Text Manipulation
Over the course of the memoir, Mariam wrote letter to her family on a consistent basis. As the Alzheimer’s developed, the letters became less complex and thought out, afterwards the text itself started to break, and sentences were difficult to read. The letters provided the audience with tangible evidence related to the disease progression. The variation in the letters becomes pronounced as the memoir develops.

On page 16 – Mariam writes a letter to Sarah to help her cope with the unfamiliar surroundings of Montreal; 40 – Mariam’s writing reflects that of an elementary student, with words atop other words, and broken sentences; 48 – the letters became simple notes with difficult to distinguish meanings; and 69 – notes become a few undistinguishable sentences with hearts penned in.

Facial Details
Tangles art work uses a wide variety of facial characteristics to help guide the audience across the scenes.

Early in the memoir, childhood memories of nightmares had simple facial illustrations, and made it easy to invest less time in this section. The development of the Sisters used more pronounced facial features, making the pages more vivid and capturing reader attention. In large groups of people, only important characters would have illustrated faces, making it easier to distinguish between people.

The character models are remarkably consistent throughout the memoir, making it easy to forget a name but remember a face, and continue enjoying the memoir.

Artistic Exaggeration
Several moments in Tangles use wildly exaggerated interactions to instill a sense of urgency, anger, and general mood related to a scene.

On page 56, Sarah imagines her mother as a crazy tooth-brush wielding demon, when in fact she is simply brushing her teeth all night and keeping the family awake. This scene reveals how Sarah felt about the entire ordeal. On page 77, Sarah reacts to a few children making rude remarks about her mother. The exaggeration depicts a raging monster in place of Sarah, but also helps the audience connect with her emotions.

Blank Space
Tangles uses whitespace extensively to help focus the audience on subtle points. Many of these occur outside the memoir frames.

Pages 42, 45, 47, and 61 are examples of this. The memoir abruptly stops and inserts a side-bar to the story. Sometimes these moments include separate stories, other times they are close moments between characters, but they help separate key moments from the rest of the story.

Tangles also uses blank space to help illustrate a deeper moment, but the whitespace is not always the same context. For example, page 33 uses a wide white area to illustrate Rob walking away from the family at the Airport. In this scene, the whitespace shows the reader how the family felt at a distance. On page 35 however, the family is in a clinic staring at the doctor’s door. The only illustration is 3 blacked out characters and a door. This scene reveals a family intently focused on one thought – the events through that door. Finally, on page 93, Mariam is standing next to a tree, and a sentence explains her thoughts. The whole scene is mostly white space, and helps the audience focus on the internalized thoughts of Mariam in that moment, and nothing else.