A GRAPHIC NOVEL with virtually no dialogue--there are occasional excerpts from letters written out in longhand, but for the most part Discipline is unfussy line drawings arranged on the page without panels. Opening to a random page, you have the impression of opening someone's sketch book.
Although the approach is spare, the story is nuanced. Charles Cox is a young Quaker man in Indiana. When the American Civil War breaks out, he has to make the impossible choice between his faith's commitment to pacifism and its commitment to the abolition of slavery. Much to his family's dismay, he joins the army and goes to war.
He doesn't have an easy war. His unit does set some slaves free, but he also sees friends die, gets wounded, and is taken prisoner.
Back home, there are other kinds of problems. Charles's sister, Fanny, gets involved with a local man and becomes pregnant, but he will not marry her. The disgrace and humiliation she goes through are a painful domestic counterpoint to what Charles endures.
I'm not sure why this book is as moving as it is, but I think it has to do with the absence of dialogue. Take a general midwestern taciturnity and combine it with a faith that requires one speak only when the Lord moves one to speak, and a great deal is going to go unsaid. The pressure of the unsaid--even though the drawing too is understated, without expressionist exaggeration or unusual detail--is continually felt. Is the maintaining of such quiet in the face of such pain what the title refers to?
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