Will Eisner’s A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories (1978) marked the beginning of a second phase in the writer-artist’s career. It has been called the ‘first graphic novel’ and has been hailed as a central text in the emergence of the ‘graphic novel’ as a cultural phenomenon. This paper presents the culture and identity issues in Will Eisner’s novel “A Contract with God”. The stories are thematically linked with motifs of frustration, disillusionment, violence, and issues of ethnic identity. Eisner uses large, monochromatic images in dramatic perspective, and emphasizes the caricatured characters' facial expressions; few panels or captions have traditional borders around them. Graphic art of “A Contract with God” is gigantically pictorial and described with social realistic conveys of new historicism and culturalism.

1. National Multidisciplinary Conference
On
Innovation and Recent Trends in Commerce and Humanities
Conference date: 06-03-2022
Organized by
Gopinathji Mahila Arts & Commerce College
(Affiliated to Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University)
Managed by
Swami Shree Paramhans Foundation Trust
Author:
Kaushalkumar Hareshbhai Desai
Research Scholar
Department of English
Shri Govind Guru University, Godhra
Co-Author:
Dr. Anuragsinh D. Puvar
Associate Professor
Mahila Mahavidyalay, Vadodara
“A Study Of Culture And Identity Issues In Will Eisner’s Graphic Novel: A Contract With God”

2. Graphic Novel
• Illustrated in the style of a comic book or it is considered a
bigger form as graphic novel
• The story is told using a combination of words and pictures in
a sequence across the page
• Graphic novels can be any genre, and tell any kind of story
• Graphic novel, usually includes text, images, word balloons,
sound effects, and panels.

3. Culture And Identity Issues In Will Eisner’s
Graphic Novel: A Contract With God
It is considered as the first graphic novel and it has four different stories moves round with different
concepts.
• A Contract with God
• The Street Singer
• The Super
• Cookalein

4. The crucial differences which distinguish
human societies and human beings are
not biological. They are cultural.
—Ruth Benedict

5. 5
1. A Contract with God
● A Contract with God mixes melodrama with social realism.
● In Russia, The young, deeply religious Hasidic Jew Frimme Hersh carves a
contract with God on a stone tablet to live a life of good deeds
● He moves to New York, into a tenement building at 55 Dropsie Avenue, and
lives a simple life devoted to God.
● He adopts an infant girl, Rachele, who is abandoned on his doorstep.
● When she dies of a sudden illness, Hersh is infuriated, and accuses God of
violating their contract.
● He abandons his faith, shaves his beard, and lives a life as a miserly
businessman in a penthouse with a gentile mistress.
● Eisner called the story's creation "an exercise in personal anguish“ Ethnic
identity and social forms were treated as personal fulfillment.

6. 6
2. The Street Singer
• Issues of people in modern time.
• This story forecast Women as a tool for men.
• Marta Maria, an aging opera singer, tries to seduce a young
man, Eddie
• She had given up her own singing career for an alcoholic
husband.
• She hopes to get back into show business as mentor to Eddie,
and gives him money for clothes.
• He buys whiskey instead and returns to his pregnant wife,
who herself had given up on show business for him and
whom he abuses.
• Eisner based the story on memories of an unemployed man
who made the rounds of tenements singing "popular songs or
off-key operatic operas" for spare change.
• Eisner remembered throwing the street singer coins on
occasion, and considered he "was able to immortalize his
story" in "The Street Singer".

7. 7
3. The Super
● Racial aspects and ethnic identity issues.
● Those who live in the tenement at 55 Dropsie Avenue fear and
mistrust their antisemitic superintendent
● Seduction of Mrs. Farfell's young niece Rosie and sexual desire of
Mr. Scuggs.
● she poisons Scuggs' dog and only companion, Hugo, and steals
Scuggs's money.
● Mr. Scuggs threatened her but misrepresented by others.
● Mr. Scuggs got harsh comments from the society people
● They called police. Mr. Scuggs shoots himself. embracing Hugo's
body.
● One can take the example of Hairy Ape novel with The Super

8. 8
4. Cookalein
● Mindset of the people and taken as commodity to fulfill for
them.
● "Cookalein" is a story of tenants of 55 Dropsie Avenue
vacationing in the country. To be alone with his mistress, a man
named Sam sends his wife and children away to the Catskill
Mountains, where they stay at a "cookalein"
● How the mentality changed the perception of the people has
portrayed very keenly in this story.
● Here Eisner used the real names of his family members: his
parents Sam and Fannie, his brother Petey, and himself,
"Willie".
● Eisner called "Cookalein" "an honest account of his coming of
age" that was "a combination of invention and recall".

9. References
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University
Press, 1995.
Eisner, Will. A Contract with God. W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.
Kinzer, Sarah . Comics Studies. 16 9 2016.
Langner, Sebastian. New Historicism. A Viable Theory? www.grin.com, 2014.
Royal, Derek Parker. "Sequential Sketches of Ethnic Identity: Will Eisner's A Contract with God as
Graphic Cycle." College Literature Summer 2011: 150-167.
Wikipedia, Contributors. A Contract with God. n.d. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

10. Thank you
kaushaldesai123@gmail.com