Give Me Liberty by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons

I've had a long time to sit on this book - my life got really busy in between reading it and having a chance to write about it. I'm very glad I had this time to reflect, because my initial impression of this "American Dream" was not very strong.

I felt that the characterization of the protagonist was too simple to be moving - she seemed like such a stereotype that it was difficult to think of her as anything other than a vehicle for some kind of message or symbolism. And if that was intentional, then any intended message or symbolism was unnecessarily muddled or disappointingly simplistic.

But then! I had time to think. I was expecting this novel to make political statements about the America that we live in, and when I found that the plot took the reader further and further from reality, I didn't understand the point. The protagonist doesn't fight for any large political ideals resembling revolution. She's very focused on her individual survival and is sporadically invested in the well-being of her family back in the ghetto. She's so beaten-down with trauma and hypocrisy that she thinks and speaks in short phrases connected by only a thread.

There is a strong and unflinching look into the upper workings of politics, evidenced by a popular president whose secret service has a compromised loyalty and spies on him while keeping him unavoidably supplied with alcohol during times of political crisis. The swaying of popular opinion and the ability to manipulate it is subtly handled in the public's acceptance of a tyrannical figure, and then his opposite, and then the tyrant again.

There are fun alternate history and science fiction aspects to this novel. A warring America with inner city troubles is exaggerated past the point of reality, and it's important to remember that this is, in fact, an alternate history and not a direct commentary on our own reality. I neglected to focus on this fact, and completely missed what I now believe to be the point of this novel.

In this twisted reality, our hero (have I mentioned her name yet? It's Martha Washington) acts in ways that rarely resemble a political hero's methods. She fights constantly, both in and out of the military's good graces. She's branded early on by a superior officer who wants to keep her a secret - this is the main conflict that makes us like her in her adult phase. As a child, she's overachieving and subject to horror, which makes her easily sympathetic. However, she grows into a more physically than intellectually reactive adult, and I couldn't help but feel as though her mental capacity took a backseat to combat scenes.

Martha acts in defense of a government that anyone in Bush-era America would outright condemn, but she's our hero. The point may be that every era, every regime, breeds its defenders and its heroes - that the definitions of honor and loyalty are dependent upon your historical or political position.

All this serious talk aside, this book is a fun read. There are physically-deformed children who are psychically connected to both people and machines. There's an Apache war chief who fuels a really interesting subplot about reparations. There are interspersed sections of magazine and newspaper articles that flesh out the alternate reality. It's a very well put-together book. Next time, I'll try to read it when I'm not in the hospital on pain medication. I'm sure that if you do so, you'll find this an intriguing story.