Loss, survival, and trauma: A multimodal representation of children in the Rwandan and Central African war graphic narratives

Abstract

This article approaches children’s post-war representations in graphic narratives of war, loss, trauma and survival in Rwanda and the Central African Republic․ While existing scholarship on these post-war contexts focuses on the history of the conflicts or humanitarian policy, there have been few studies of the uses of language and images in graphic novels to make sense of children and war․ Through the lens of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, which draws on Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar and trauma theory, the study investigates how Gaspard Talmasse’s Alice on the Run and Marc Ellison and Didier Kassaï’s A House Without Windows use visual and linguistic choices such as gaze, framing, salience, perspective, modality and vectorial structures to represent children as victims, witnesses and survivors.This qualitative, multimodal analysis examines selected African war graphic novels at the panel and page levels. The goal is to highlight the impact of war on children, show how the graphics visually represent loss and trauma, and understand how the texts express resilience and survival through multiple modes. The results suggest that visual grammar is key in emphasising children’s vulnerability through close-ups, muted colour palettes, and fragmented spatial layouts. Meanwhile, the graphics show survival through movement vectors, symbolic images, and deliberate silences.