Daytripper is a graphic novel by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba. It is about Bras de Oliva Domingos, an obituary writer living in Brazil and who dies at the end of every chapter. It is about life and death and how they are incomplete without the other. Intro to Rhetoric and Narrative asks students to question everything about a narrative. For example what does an author’s stylistic choices mean or why does the order of a narrative matter? ENC 1143 had students read Daytripper. Daytripper allows students to ask these questions and more, and that is why it is a good choice for the course. Daytripper uses illustrations, a character that dies at the end of every chapter, and an obituary for every death to make its audience think the mechanics and concepts of a narrative, and more importantly, to question it. The first thing one notices about Daytripper is that it is a graphic novel. Daytripper’s illustrations are fantastically colorful, but firmly grounded in reality. This is Bras’ life, death, and…show more content… So why kill Bras’ at the end of every chapter? What purpose does each death serve? Daytripper asks students to look for the reasoning behind each death. We see snapshots of Bras’ life, from his birth until he is seventy-six. Each chapter ends not only in Bras’ death, but also with a message. What that message is supposed to convey is left up to the reader. An example of this is the first chapter of the book, which begins with Bras at age 32, bemoaning the fact that his parents have forgotten his birthday and that a gala celebrating his father is also on his special day. He chooses to get cigarettes and ends up getting shot. A message here is that “you don’t choose family” and that you can choose how you act towards your family (pg. 32). However that is but one of many different messages a reader could find in the chapter, and so it is with every
