Chelsea Brenyah

Jessica Penner

ENG1121

Oct. 28,2020

Word Count: 312

Micro-Activity #16

I think the author’s of the listed works decided to use multimodal texts for discussing such complex historical topics because multimodality is an approach that allows them to offer a new perspective and make the reader’s or viewer’s experience more fascinating as well as popularize a certain story or event. First of all, there are already numerous novels and articles written on such topics as World War II or the Civil Rights movement. But there are not that many comic books. This novelty attracts the readers who normally might not be interested in historical or social issues as well as younger readers. Graphic novels, for example, is a way to make the story more vivid and accessible for so many readers: for instance, those who have dyslexia. Secondly, multimodality is a fun way to discuss a serious topic. Reading an interesting graphic novel can show that some event is not only tragic but also fascinating. Multimodality also makes the story more vivid and actionable. I think the authors of the listed works wanted to show the readers that some historic events are not simply facts and numbers as in a textbook, but there are stories behind them: both sad and hopeful. 

I tried creating a graphic novel, or rather a comic strip. It was a very interesting task but also much more complex than I expected. I felt very excited about that work. It turned out to take much more time than I originally planned. One would imagine that creating a short story with only a few lines of text is not such a hard task. But, in reality, the limited amount of words makes the author be really thoughtful about how to depict the ideas and events as it is not possible too, for example, describe the character’s motivation.