Comics and Chaos : the representation of violence in Joe Sacco's Palestine and Hamid Sulaiman's Freedom Hospital : A Syrian Story

Comics are known for their entertaining nature and complex visual-verbal form. It is precisely the latter that enables the genre to tackle more serious issues such as conflicts and trauma, for instance. This dissertation covers the representation of different forms of violence in two contemporary graphic novels: Palestine (2001) by Joe Sacco and Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story (2018) by Hamid Sulaiman. The two books are very similar in terms of topics and style. Thus, this dissertation is divided into three parts. The first one investigates Palestine and how it represents the stories of the people amid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The second one adopts a similar approach in order to analyse Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story and how it illustrates the Syrian revolution. The last part is a comparative analysis of the two graphic novels and aims to highlight the different aspects related to the representation of violence in comic books.