Set during the Great Depression, this graphic book presents a treasure trove of near-mythical stories that fictionally illustrated the bitter sweet tenement life of Eisner’s youth. It ultimately tells the epic story of life, death, and resurrection while exploring man’s fractious relationship with an all-too vengeful God, a mesmerising chronicle of the universal American immigrant experience.
A CONTRACT WITH GOD is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Will Eisner revolves around poor Jewish characters who live in a tenement in New York City. Four stories make up the book: A religious man gives up his faith after the death of his young adopted daughter, a has-been diva tries to seduce a poor, young street singer who in turn tries to take advantage of her, an anti-semitic tenement manager commits suicide after been accused of paedophilia, and intertwined stories of several characters vacations on a shoestring in the Catskill Mountains.
These stories are thematically linked with motifs of frustration, disillusionment, violence and issues of ethnic identity. Eisner uses large monochromatic images in dramatic perspective emphasising the caricatured characters’ facial expressions. A CONTRACT WITH GOD mixes melodrama with social realism derived in part from the author’s personal memories growing up in a Bronx tenement.
The stories drew from Eisner’s feeling over his daughter Alice’s death and his feelings towards God are refle in the book. The other stories are from his memories of people he met in the tenements of his youth. The stories’ sexual content is prominent, though not in a gratuitous manner of comic books celebrating hedonism, but not so much erotic as disturbing due to the characters’ frustrations of feeling.
The narration is lettered as part of the artwork, rather than set apart in caption boxes. Pages feature large drawings which focus on the facial expressions. Eisner emphasises the urban setting with dramatic, vertical perspective using dark artwork that use visual motifs to tie the story together. In contrast to comics in the superhero genre, in which Eisner did prominently in his early career, the characters in this book are not heroic, often feeling frustrated and powerless even when performing seemingly heroic deeds to help their neighbours. The characters are rendered in a caricatured manner that contrast with the realistic backgrounds imitating an impressionistic sense of memory. Characters are depicted as purely good or evil. Confinement is a prominent theme.
A CONTRACT WITH GOD magnifies how life is what you make of it. Either you tremble with it or thrive with it.
Eisner does sn exceptional job of conjuring settings in the story. His narration is formal but in the accent of native New Yorker, using a lot of figurative language rather then literal description.
This body of work is a fabulous introspective storytelling blending fiction with autobiographical overtones and offering a grounded yet emotional portrayal of Jewish immigrant life in the early 20th century New York.
Eisner’s storytelling is intimate, raw, and haunting, each page feels like its torn from a soul with fluidity between words and images unmatched in graphic styles.
