• Cover by Claire & Ateekah (Marx Dormoy)

    Cover by Claire & Ateekah (Marx Dormoy)

    Cover by Claire & Ateekah.

     

    I’m going to describe and analyze the cover of the fifth child that I created.

    At the top of this cover we can see the title of the book written in bold and distorted letters which give an information about the atmosphere in the story that is to say with fear, sadness and darkness. We also find the name of the author who is Doris Lessing. In addition the background is grey and blurred in order to show the gloomy and tense atmosphere of the book. This cover is made of 3 pictures which are in black and white. These colors highlight the dark side of the story which gives us a fright and which is a tragedy (all the family was in pain because of Ben, she is destroyed, Ben didn’t become someone normal, there is no solution at the end of the story…).

    Besides at the top in the left hand corner we can see a photograph which depicts a pregnant woman. I chose this picture to refer to the difficult, long and painful pregnancy of Harriet when she was expecting Ben. ““My God,” she said, or grunted, or groaned, and then suddenly sat up, or scrambled out of bed and went doubled up out of the room, fast, escaping from the pain”: this scene took place when Harriet was pregnant for only 5 months and already suffered because of Ben, she already felt he would be abnormal, different even if the doctor thought and said the contrary, therefore she looks worried on the picture.

    The second photograph is at the top in the right hand corner and deals with the face of a woman who represents Harriet in the story. She hides her face with her hands: actually when someone put his hands on his face like this, it’s the reaction of someone who is crying because of heavy problems, because of despair. On her hands we can observe a drawing which represents Harriet’s feelings when she faced her problems with Ben’s behavior and character; we can see a mouth, 2 eyes and a lot of tears: here, the tears represent the sadness, the powerlessness of Harriet seeing Ben like a monster, she knows she can’t help him, she doesn’t know what to do, and at the same time we can see fear and horror in her eyes because she feels guilty, maybe she is ashamed of this child she didn’t want and she asks herself if he is really her own child, she has doubts, she is confused; moreover she must be terrified seeing Ben like he really is, that is to say very violent, uncontrollable, aggressive, emotionless…but she must be also sad because no one want to help her with Ben, no one tries to understand her fight to save Ben. She feels desperate, hopeless, without any solution: we have the impression she must keep her face hidden because she can’t clearly show her true feelings in front of her family, she kept these feelings into her because nobody around her is able to understand her: she feels alone.

    At last there is another picture taken from the movie the lord of the rings: it focuses on Gollum’s face but in the story, this photograph represents Ben. I chose this picture because Gollum looks like a monster, a “goblin”, he is odd like Ben. Ben is terrifying, scary and is qualify as a “freak”. The 2 eyes here reflect the character of Ben: he is threatening, dangerous, ready to make something immoral and he has yellow, big and worrying eyes. In addition Gollum is always represented naked like Ben in the passage in the institution: he is not respected, he is removed and alone. In top of that he is behind bars: he is like a prisoner. Harriet locked him up in his bedroom because of the danger he represents for the family, and because of his behavior (for example when he killed the cat of the family).

     

    Claire's presentation:

     

    Ateekah's presentation:


    Tags Tags: , , , ,
  • Comments

    1
    Quime
    Friday 11st November 2011 at 22:16

    I think that the analysis of the cover is very interesting. In fact, Ateekah and Claire choose three photograph which depict very well the main's characters and events of the story like the diferents harriet's pregnancy, her feeling face to ben and her family, and Ben who is represented with an 'horror' photograph. it emphasizes the strange personality of Ben.  Moreover, they choose to do their cover in black and white and blurred, like the story, that is to say the dark and gloomy atmosphere and also the fact that we don't really know the nature of Ben. This is the question, the reader doesn't know 'what' is Ben, like her mother, her family. It's blurred, because there is a part of fantastic, mystic.

    2
    joyce libaks joyce libaks profile
    Monday 14th November 2011 at 14:50

    I found your cover very interested because you really focus your intention on the mother and not only the child. Besides you depict Ben in a good way:like a monster as he is

    3
    Erika Carlier Erika Carlier profile
    Monday 12nd December 2011 at 10:59

    I think that your cover is also interesting because you had really thrown the light on Harriet's feelings (who is an important character in the book).  Besides, at first sight the picture on which Ben is depicted made me think about a little monster called Chucky.

    4
    Tuesday 18th December 2012 at 17:57

    I like your cover its a quite interesting

    Suivre le flux RSS des commentaires


    Add comment

    Name / User name:

    E-mail (optional):

    Website (optional):

    Comment: