Craig suffered a lot of abuse from his peers growing up. Children Are Cruel: A reoccuring theme is that even little kids can be cruel.Bullying the Disabled: Raina's brother Ben was bullied growing up for having Down's Syndrome.On the other hand, Craig decides to go to art school, move to Portland and pursue his dreams while taking day jobs on the side.

Bittersweet Ending: Craig and Raina break up because she wants to focus on her schooling as her parents get a divorce, and Craig suffers a Crisis of Faith on studying the Bible.

Big Little Brother: After Craig comes back from college he's surprised to see his younger brother is now a foot taller than him.

Bland-Name Product: In one scene, Craig has a bowl of Cheeryoats.

All of the Other Reindeer: Craig was bullied his entire childhood for being too skinny, too poor, too religious, and too quiet.

Adult Child: Raina's sister Laura, who's nineteen but has a mental age of about one.

Also when one friend's mother catches them having a pee fight, Craig mentions that they were lucky it wasn't their father.

Abusive Parents: While Craig's father is never seen beating the children, he does lock Phil up in a spider-filled closet for being too noisy, and when Craig is caught drawing a dirty picture, he looks like he's barely restraining himself from hitting him.

He also mentions that mullets are popular in his rural town even into the 1990s.

'80s Hair: Mullets are commonplace in scenes set in Craig's elementary years.

While at Bible Camp as a teenager, his life changes when he meets another outcast named Raina. As he grew, he became more and more interested in Christianity as a way of dealing with his woes. He spent his days drawing and fantasizing. Growing up Craig had a less-than-stellar childhood full of unfortunate events and boredom. Blankets is an autobiographical graphic novel (or an 'illustrated novel' as it's called on the cover) by Craig Thompson.īlankets tells the story of Craig's life from childhood until adulthood.

Blankets graphic novel