Images

As detailed in the article on structure, the images in Bitter Medicine are an important part of how the story is told. Unlike other graphic memoirs, Bitter Medicine’s images are often divorced from the text and are instead given their own narration and point of view.

The images in Bitter Medicine are drawn by Liv Martini, they don’t contain a lot of details and often have scribbly line work. They do not not contain any colour or shading of any kind. The exception to this being a few drawings that are solid grey with white lines, and a portrait of Clem that is fully rendered. The images are very frequent, every page or two of words is accompanied by several pages of drawings. The relationship between Clem’s words and Liv’s drawing can vary between just depicting Clem’s words to scenes not mentioned by Clem at all.

These techniques are able to reinforce the “THEMES” of the memoir in several ways. CAMH states that symptoms of schizophrenia include “difficulties with attention, concentration and memory.” The rough linework and simple shapes are  able to show how Liv’s perspective of the world was changed by living with schizophrenia by depicting his memories as something fleeting and lacking a clear grasp on the specifics of what happened.

- Zach