"But I Can't"

The short "But I Can't" is skillful in its ability to depict the childhood obsession with UFOs that two friends share and how the mystery of the obsession hauntingly lingers into the narrator's adulthood in only four pages. The choice to use watercolor, I think, is indicative of a larger theme in the comic- that is, of imprecision. The emphasis on color, rather than detail conjures a feeling of nebulousness and uncertainty in the reader. The narrator's school mates exude skepticism, and the narrator herself struggles long after the fact of Harriet's disappearance with the discrepancy between what Harriet represents and the lack of sound empirical evidence supporting the existence of extraterrestrials; though, for our narrator, the tendency towards disbelief is not a natural impulse. Her childhood curiosity haunts her, even as she's faced with the improbability of Harriet's claims.

This thought brings me back to the subject of memoir and the quest for truth that accompanies the genre, and that can be observed in every graphic memoir we've encountered thus far in the semester. Our narrator feels a need to recount Harriet's story. She spends a great deal of time trying to reconcile facts with the superstition that she cannot help. In the end, our narrator states the three things she can be certain of: that Harriet was "a defenseless young girl," that "Harriet went out into the countryside," and that "there's no evidence to suggest that extraterrestrials visit Earth." The last frame grows to four times the size of the previous frame with an emphasis on "Still; sometimes I lie awake at night, trying to believe." It reminds me of a line I read in a book for another class: "Fact explains nothing." Moreover, fact requires explanation; however, there are some things that cannot be explained. The human capacity for knowledge is limited. The unknown cannot be encapsulated through words, or brushstrokes.