Critical Analysis 1:

Safe Area, Volatile Facts
Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde perfectly captures the paranoia and fear of the former Yugoslavian nations during the Yugoslavian War. Sacco’s narrative shows how the people reacted to these atrocities around them and, unlike the newspapers, humanized them. However, this has led to a few faults in the graphic novel. Some of his views are one-sided, the accuracy of his readings must be somewhat over-dramatized, and his facts may be tad flawed. Sacco has created a masterpiece that has achieved what no other text has done, but at the same time has some questionable blemishes that occasionally undermine the story.
None can question that the graphic novel that Sacco has masterfully scribed accomplished a lot not just for its medium, but also for history-infused stories in general. Sacco condensed many years worth of information, back story, interviews, and perspectives into a mere 227 pages. Accomplished historians would be envious of this feat that a mere journalist has achieved. The black and white imagery has been used in substitution for color for the effect of a flashback, or rather, a terrible nightmare. Every character has a story to tell: That is the unspoken philosophy of Sacco’s novel. Sacco’s characters feel very real; he writes about them as if they are his neighbors or childhood friends that he’s known for years. The reader has a quiet friend like Edin or a womanizing comrade (or bad wannabe singer) like Riki with whom they can relate.
He interviewed countless Eastern European denizens that have been affected by the war and retells each of their stories effectively. He also perfectly captures the paranoia of time. Nobody in Eastern Europe nor the United States knew when a treaty would be signed. Edin, in his testimonial best describes the ensuing chaos when he says,
“I was very thirsty, and I went into some houses looking for something to drink, Serb houses… People were burning down Serb homes. Most of the Muslim homes had already been burned down by the Serbs. Some people didn’t want to take anything. They just wanted to burn. They were very angry. They didn’t care about anything. You couldn’t say anything to anyone. People were scarred and running out of control” (Sacco 89).

Dramatically, the story is effective. The flip side is that he’s taken only the good bits and pieces for the proper story effect. His work leads to the question: How accurate is Sacco’s work? Sacco most likely tape-recorded or scribbled down notes on each conversation. Also, he probably needed a translator in order to fully comprehend his subjects of his interviews. Many quotes could have been mistranslated is misinterpreted. Most of his own experiences also had to have relied solely on his memory from the 1990s; the book was published in 2000.
Also, his views are very pro-Bosnian. Although Serbia was arguably the primary antagonist of the Bosnian War, Bosnia still committed several war crimes and didn’t treat its own citizens very humanely (Simpson). After all, it took them several years to finally sign a ceasefire under the jurisdiction of the United Nations and mostly elongated the war unnecessarily Sacco (212).