Plot, Purpose, Themes

The plot of Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor revolves around his life in Cleveland, Ohio starting in the 1970’s. He dives into the important, strange, and sometimes mundane yet oddly memorable moments in his life in the lower class which typically revolved around jobs, the people in his neighbourhood, relationships, dating, sex. Essentially, they focus on the life of a ‘typical’ young man and his experiences in growing up. The main purpose of this graphic memoir seems to be to entertain since it relies a lot on the visual appeal of comics, the humour in the images, and Harvey’s own sense dry humour in his writing. For example in How I Spent my Summer Vacation: 1972 he mentions how he tried to set up a his friend with a girl, thinking he’s doing his friend a favour, but the friend ended up not being interested whatsoever calling the girl a “pig” (Pekar 20).

Shock value is also used to entertain from the use of crude subject matter, like in Love Story he writes about having sex with a prostitute (Pekar 9). He also quite opinionated, aiming to persuade or at least show people how he sees the world. In Remembering Be-ins he comments on what he thought of the sixties; how the people involved in the Be-ins movement “bummed him out” and he wasn’t able to enjoy those times (Pekar 5).