Here

Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | Adult | Published in 2014

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Pages 1-113

Pages 114-209

Pages 210-303

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Fluidity of Time

Here explores how the passing of time appears to a casual observer of the same spot over billions of years. The graphic novel executes this by operating on two different levels: depicting wide-sweeping changes and exploring more specific, personal changes. Some pages in Here depict the corner of the room before the house—or even the human species—existed. Pages 150 and 151 show a view of a desolate landscape in the year 1,000,000 BCE, followed by pages 152 and 153 showing the year 3,000,000,000 BCE. By showing these extreme pre-historic ages, the novel demonstrates the vastness of geologic time, making the moments it depicts in the house appear brief and insignificant by comparison. Even though the majority of the graphic novel occurs in the corner of one room, those moments are essentially a snapshot. By depicting such a vast timescale, the novel challenges perceptions of time that depend on human experiences, emphasizing that the place was there before people and will be there after people as well. Here also depicts the many years of its narratives in non-linear order, creating a sense of fluidity in time. By using frames to show many years on one page, it creates the sense that all these moments happen at once, unobserved by the people in them but real to the space.

By depicting time as non-linear from page to page, including fractions of bigger pictures to make one scene spanning years, Here creates multiple narrative threads that coexist. Though the year of the page may change, there are many instances in the graphic novel in which frames from different years depicting the same people will appear one page after the other. This suggests a cohesive narrative that unfolds over time as the setting changes around it. For example, from pages 40 to 49, the year of the page varies from 3,450 BCE to 2015 CE, with many other years between them. In each of these scenes, though, there is a panel in the space usually occupied by the couch and the window that depicts the children of a family having their photograph taken. The first panel depicts 1962, when the children are young, and panels on subsequent pages show the same photograph in the same space in the years 1964, 1969, 1979, and 1983. The children steadily grow older in each frame until they are all adults in the final one. These panels depict the same space in the room at intervals that show the growth of a family over time. Even as the panels are set against backgrounds depicting moments that take place long before or after the years of the photographs, that space contains their story. Their more personal, unique story of growing up together into adulthood is situated into the broader story of the space the house occupies moving through time.

The Interconnectedness of Human Experiences

Even though Here does not utilize the traditional structure of a graphic novel, in which panels fit together in a neat, cohesive order, the novel tells a story of the human experience over time. At many points in the novel, panels scatter across a page depicting similar moments happening in different people’s lives. By doing this, the panels create a connected, larger picture of common human experiences over time. The effect is to show that no matter the time or state of a changing world, humans share common experiences. One such moment occurs on pages 58 and 59. The two pages are set in the year 1957 and depict a mother holding a baby on the couch beneath the window. Scattered across the page are four panels, dated 1949, 1924, 1988, and 1945, each depicting a woman holding a baby. These images span across 64 years, and yet each moment is the same. In each year, a woman, most likely a mother, holds a baby in her arms. It is a moment of new life and a new beginning, despite all happening in a place where it has occurred before.

Here often depicts shared human experiences in tiny moments, scattered across the pages. Many are emotionally charged. By showing similar moments in different years, Here visualizes seemingly unique or intimate moments as parts of a greater narrative. The unique structure of Here also shows how these same moments happen in the same place across time, demonstrating how these moments can be passed down. On pages 216 and 217, children play Twister. The pages themselves are set in 1971, and on the left side of the page, part of the game is visible, with a girl stretched across the mat. Moving to the right, two panels complete the picture of the Twister game, but set in 1966 and 2015, with different children playing. The Twister mat appears to be the same, suggesting that the game and its fun is handed down through generations of a family living in the house. What it really shows, however, is the shared human experience of having fun while spending time together. In all three panels, children pass the time with each other and a game. It does not matter the year—the need for such moments remains the same. By layering these panels, one next to the other, Here creates a picture of one game over time with different players, all in the same exact place.

Objects and Images as Containers of Memory

The archaeologist who rings the doorbell in 1986 goes a long way toward explaining how objects and images function as containers of memory in Here. He is looking for artifacts belonging to the Indigenous people—probably members of the Lenape tribe, based on the location and time period—who once occupied this site. For the Lenape people, those objects were once woven into the fabric of daily life, as commonplace as the watch, wallet, and keys that the woman in 1986 is continually reminding her husband to take with him to work. For the archaeologist, they are artifacts of a world that no longer exists except in the form of historical memory.

The tour guide in 2213 fills much the same role as the archaeologist in 1986. She leads a tour group over a boardwalk that spans a body of water where the house once stood. Using technology that did not exist in 1986, she projects images of a wallet, a watch, and a set of keys into the air. In her hands, these common objects become artifacts, as remote from the experience of people living in 2213 as the Lenape arrowheads and shards of pottery are to the people of 1986. Whatever specific, personal stories might once have attached to these objects have been lost. In 2213, no one knows that the woman who once lived in this house used to remind her husband to take his watch, wallet, and keys with him to work each day. Instead, they open a window to the distant past, much like the inset panels that, in Here, open windows from one historical moment to another.

The arrangement of panels spread out randomly on the page breaks from the traditional design of many graphic novels. While many graphic novels—following the conventional format of comics—feature panels side-by-side, progressing in a chronological order, the design of Here inverts that. Every pair of facing pages is set with a backdrop of a certain year, creating one image of the room, while random panels from different years open a window into that spot in the room at a different time. For example, on pages 66 and 67, the backdrop of the pages is the corner of the room in 1986. In this scene, the doorbell rings and a dog barks. On page 67 is a large panel depicting someone sitting in an armchair complaining: “Every day the mailman comes, the dog barks, the mailman goes away” (67). Here uses this panel, positioned to show an exact spot in the room during a different year, to show how even 32 years apart, dogs still bark at mailmen. The use of the panel creates one moment spanning decades, creating a story disjointed in time. By utilizing this style, positioning different panels on the page to connect to each other, the novel creates a cohesive narrative moment out of disjointed time. The consonance between these images—something no one person could know—suggests that the house itself is a container of historical memory.