The Lost Rooms of an Endless Conscience: A Teenage World

Ghost World is a graphic novel written by Daniel Clowes and it shows the story of two girls who are best friends named Enid and Rebecca. The novel conveys several emotions, such as: denial, love, insecurity, pressure, among others and it´s also characterized by its dark humor and a bit of comedy,

Both girls are graduating from High school and figuring out what´s next with their lives. During the story one character tries her best to be different from the rest and not to fall in the society standars, in fact she tries to be unique (at least physically) by changing constantly her style. On the other hand, the other main character is quite the opposite, because she does the things that most of the girls do when they are teenagers, girl stuff.

While reading it there is an obvious relation between real life and the one that is shown in the novel, you are asking yourself why? Well... teenagers can be childish, superficial, immature, etc. And taking a gander at the story we can see that in the behavior of the characters. Also the language spoken in the novel is very similar to the one the one that teenagers use, that means words and concepts that young people understand.

A variety of themes are exposed in Ghost World, for instance, sexuality, future expectations, relationships, superficiality, love.

The novel was very successful due to the exposure of problems that teenagers have to cope with when graduating. In the sense that the vision they have regarding the future; go to collage or go to work? stay at home or move out? Decisions, decisions and decisions...probably the hardest part of being a teenager.

In my opinion, the end of the story is the moment in which we can truly recognize and see how accurate is the dialogue of the characters in comparison to real life, how similar is the behaviour of teenagers, how well reflected is the confusion that teenagers have when planing their future.

Why Ghost World?...People leave this small town in the search of their future and new opportunities, therefore we can see that not so many things happen in this town.

There is a quote from the novel that states : "God, it drives me crazy when I know exactly what I want and I can´t find it anywhere". For me, that is one of the most common issues of teenage people. They start a search to find what they believe is missing and in that search they can go through changes, living different situations and coping with new problems.