Has your soul ever been stolen? Has it ever been stolen by a cat? Well, Raleigh has had her soul stolen by a cat and is trying to find it. In Bryan O’Malley’s Lost at Sea (2003), it is a coming of age novel about a girl named Raleigh, who is trying to find her place in the world. The character telling the story, Raleigh, goes on a trip with people who are just shy of being strangers, Stephanie, Ian, and Dave.
She keeps to herself and is always in her head over thinking about everything. She is finally starting to open up and tell these people about her not having a soul and how she believes her mother sold it and now a cat has it. While O’Malley’s Lost at Sea is very well thought out, page 100 focuses on ethos through the black background, pathos through her sad and lonely emotions of not having friends, and logos through her talk about her friendships or the lack thereof.
On page 100 she is thinking, among herself like she always does. This time she stops herself from getting too deep into the thought and shuts down. She fights back the thought and realizes that she does not have to think like that and let the scenarios make her upset. We the audience get to see what goes on in her mind. We feel like we are there with her while she is going through her thoughts.
The ethos is the black background because it is to symbolize her mind.
Raleigh believes that she is alone and that no one understands her. She does not talk to anyone about her problems or the things she is thinking about. Raleigh is thinking about how she does not know why people are her friend. In the picture she is lying in the bed with a cat on her stomach.
Raleigh’s thoughts keep her awake, so she isn’t able to sleep. Her eyes are wide open like she is daydreaming. She could have her eyes wide at the fact that here is a cat on her. She sees random cats in odd places where they shouldn’t be and does not know whether or not the cats are real or a figment of her imagination. Having a pet, such as a cat, is a very common source of emotional support for people. This may be the way she imagines the cat in places and even laying on her chest. She has a void in her life that should be filled with the support of friends and family but isn’t. She is very sad and lonely and subconsciously knows she needs reassurance from someone or something. The cat gives her the mental stability that she craves; she isn’t even aware this is happening.
The cat appearing in other places distracts her from the other burdens and troubles within her life. While it seems the cat is only a positive thing, it is also bad. It keeps her distracted from the bad things, but this also causes her to be unable to solve her issues. She is preoccupied with it rather than solving her other issues. Raleigh is very distant with her friends, by “blowing them off” and she does not understand why they are still friends with her. Raleigh shows us how normal teenagers of this day and time act. They are always in their own head; some even experience depression. As a teenager myself, she allows us to see within ourselves, by seeing as if we do the same thing as she does.
She over thinks the smallest details and allows them to cause problems with what she is doing. She picks the worst possible outcome that goes along with her situation and believes it is going to happen. She catches herself doing this and snaps out of it really fast. Raleigh talks about “her stupid thoughts” (100) making her think the worst of every situation she has. Raleigh thinks that she is the only one that stays in her mind and so to try and stop being an outcast, she is trying to jump out and attack her problems head on. She doesn’t consider all the little things happening to be important and need fixing; she just sees them as minor inconveniences that bother her and need to be ignored because they are inevitable. She believes the cat only stole her soul, and she needs to go after it.
The first panel shows pathos of her laying in the bed have the feeling of being alone and incapable of being happy. Raleigh thinks about all the things she feels like she has ever done wrong. She lays there wondering why her friends are her friends because she does not do anything with them, breaking Dave’s heart, and how she chooses to hang out with some people over others. “I don’t want to, but I think about all of it” (100). Even though she does not want to be trapped in her mind and think about these situations, she has no control over it and does it anyways. Since she feels her soul is gone, she has no emotion or effect on what she does. Raleigh does not feel like she belongs and is trying to find herself in this world.
They show logos by her reflecting how her being in her head is not helping her find herself, it is making her worse off, because she does not let her emotions out. In the second panel, Raleigh snaps herself out of it. “They’re all done to death to death and none of them could never be true” (100). She comes to her senses and talks about how the situations that she is coming up with are not going to happen. They have a slim chance of actually happening. The gutter shows the transition between her being in her head to actually make sense about how these assumptions will not actually come true. She yells out “NO” (100), as in a way to get her own attention, to distract herself from her own thoughts. That word takes up a big portion of the page as compared to the other small part. It is supposed to stick out and get your attention from what she is saying up above. Most teenagers are like this, feeling alone and being distant from other people, because they do not want anyone to know what they are going through.
It relates to popular culture because it is a book about a teenage girl who is soul-searching. Death always grabs people’s attention regardless of whether it was a good or bad person that had passed. When reading a newspaper, people look at the obituaries to see who has passed and if they knew them or not. Death intrigues people into reading or watching the show or book. Even though Raleigh is not really dead, she feels as she is since she does not have her soul. When people read this comic book, they get to see inside the mind and life of a teenage girl who is going through so much. I would think that she is depressed and has anxiety issues. Mostly because she has no soul, she cannot be happy. The soul is an emotional energy for which she cannot make positive. Today’s people are always on social media, listening to music, reading books and watching movies. The issue with death in popular culture is that it shows what we as a society are going through at the moment, whether it is socially or economically. Like during the Great Depression and The Dust Bowl times, which is an economic problem, the music and literature were sad but hopeful. Our country has gone through a rough time and our media was impacted.
In conclusion, O’Malley’s Lost at Sea is about a girl named Raleigh who has lost her soul. O’Malley does a portrayal of what it is like the to be a teenager. He shows the psychological problems of being a teen, and how this is one of the hardest times in someone’s life. It shows why death in popular culture benefits how the comic book is brought to light. The popular culture is affected by what the country is going through at the moment. While O’Malley’s Lost at Sea is very well thought out, page 100 focuses on ethos through the black background, pathos through her emotion of not having friends, and logos through talking about her friendships. The dark background shows the feeling of being alone and having no one. The emotion of having no friends brings forth the life a teenager on whether or not you actually have friends or if they are faking it. Raleigh is actually talking about how her friends do like her and want to be friends with her help bring her out of the darkness she put herself in.
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