Illustration Analysis: The Lotus Seed
The Lotus Seed by Sherry Garland and illustrated by Japanese artist Tatsuro Kiuchi tells the story of a Vietnamese girl’s immigration to America and the lotus seed that comes to symbolize her family’s transition, their future hope, and their country’s legacy. It begins with a young girl who picks a lotus seed from the imperial garden when she sees the emperor cry. The story then follows her growing into adulthood, her move to America, her struggle to make it in a new country, and the significance of the lotus seed through it all, finally ending with the passing down of the seed to her grandchildren, by one of whom the story is narrated by. Published in 1993, the book serves to recognize the immigrant stories of Vietnamese families who flocked to the United States during and after the Vietnam War. With oil and alkyd paints for his illustrations, Kiuchi made use of space, light, and style to communicate the family’s tumultuous story leading to the hope and home they eventually find.
The book is a rather large sized book, giving room for the illustrations and space for the text. A key component of the book is its evenness and organization. Each illustration is centered on a page, with wide margins framing it; the text is most often centered on the facing page and appears simple and stark due to the large amounts of white space. There are only two instances where text and image are combined. These are the scenes portraying the departure from Vietnam and the arrival in America, clearly marking this part of the story as the climax and transition from one setting to the other. Even on these pages, though the illustrations portray turbulent or busy movement, the text is aligned to the left in a uniform fashion as usual. Along with centered illustrations and text, the characters and subjects are usually centered in the illustrations as well. Therefore, it is very clear what the focal point of each image is because Kiuchi places it in the middle, allowing it to receive maximum attention. The repetitive centeredness and simple page layout of image and text keeps the story orderly in the readers’ mind. Also, Kiuchi uses the heavy cream-colored borders framing each image to keep the readers detached from the plot, reminding us that despite the plot’s ups and downs, the story is a retelling from the past, not one which we are immersed into with the characters.
Light and dark together is another distinct feature of the illustrations in The Lotus Seed. Kiuchi uses a lot of contrast to make his illustrations real and to bring attention to certain subjects, in two specific areas: shadows and dark settings. Almost every illustration includes shadows of some sort, often very heavy shadows of light and dark colors. For example, the emperor’s shadow across the sandy ground, shadows caused by creases on white clothing, or shadows in a room illuminated by a single light. Though there is no drawn line separating shadow from light, the contrast in color is stark enough to remind us of the hard times of the past and the hopeful times to come—an image that parallels the symbol of the lotus seed. Secondly, Kiuchi uses dark paints like deep brown, orange, gray, and black in many of his scenes, such as when the girl hides the lotus seed, the family leaves Vietnam by boat, and the grandmother “Ba” mourns over losing the lotus seed. These darker images again help the readers visualize the ups and downs of the family’s immigrant background. By physically seeing darker, more depressing or mournful settings, readers are reminded of the difficult and tumultuous times that the family (specifically Ba) went through in order to make a new home in America.
With rich, deep colors and soft lines, Kiuchi utilizes artistic style to paint illustrations that draw the reader into times of long ago and move us through the plot. The oil paints that Kiuchi used consist of rich shades of red, green, gold, and brown, and thick, bold brushstrokes, giving the impression of realistic drawings, but not very detailed. This, like the placement of the illustrations, distances the reader from the text because we can see the image but not closely. Even the characters faces are never really in focus, and instead consist mostly of shadows across the face. This distancing is enforced by Kiuchi’s use of line as well. The lines in the illustrations are very soft, not sharp and straight, and almost nonexistent, because Kiuchi does not outline anything in the pictures. These soft lines, almost blurred along the edges, give the story an unfocused feel, almost as if we are going back in time to view each step of the grandmother’s journey. The rich style of the illustrations correspond with the rich history that the story traces, from the emperor’s lotus garden, to the stormy boat ride that brings the family to America, to the children who become the new owners of the lotus seeds.
Sherry Garland’s text and Tatsuro Kiuchi’s illustrations work together to tell this story of a lotus seed that symbolizes one family’s heritage even as they move from Vietnam to America. Like Ba explains at the end, “It is the flower of life and hope…No matter how ugly the mud or how long the seed lies dormant, the bloom will be beautiful.” The illustrations are powerful in communicating this message since they complement the text. Through use of space, light and dark, and artistic elements of medium and line, Kiuchi’s illustrations emphasize each difficulty along the family’s journey to a new home in such a way that the reader is getting to see from afar the family’s immigrant legacy.
References
Garland, S. (1993). The lotus seed. Singapore: Harcourt Brace & Company.
References
Garland, S. (1993). The lotus seed. Singapore: Harcourt Brace & Company.