The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: Difference between revisions

* [[All Germans Are Nazis]]: Deconstructed. Joe ends up venting his hatred of the Nazis on anyone who looks even vaguely German, regardless of whether they support Hitler. Near the end {{spoiler|when he's stationed in Antarctica with the Navy, he's so desperate to kill some Nazis that he goes out of his way to track down and kill an innocent German geologist. He immediately feels terrible about it}}.

** Ironically, in one scene he actually saves the life of the Spaniard [[Salvador Dali]], apparently unaware that he's a prominent Fascist.

* [[Author Vocabulary Calendar]]

* [[Badass Grandpa]]: Bernard Kornblum.

* [[Easily Forgiven]]: {{spoiler|Rosa easily takes back Joe after he ran off for thirteen years, then came back and initiated a [[Zany Scheme]] to, [[It Makes Sense in Context|essentially, bungee jump off the Empire State Building]].}}

* [[Escapism]]: The story deals with the theme of literal and metaphorical escapism, especially the way in which various characters use comics to escape the troubles of their lives. Kavalier wants to escape the memory of the Nazis and guilt over his little brother. Clay wishes to escape his closeted gay life and his disability. Together they create the Escapist, a literal escape artist, who gains popularity when the public uses him to escape from the war.

* [[Expy]]: Kavalier is possibly influenced by real-life comic book artist [[wikipedia:Jim Steranko|Jim Steranko]], who was also an escape artist and magician before becoming a comic book artist. Steranko was also the inspiration for the [[Jack Kirby]] character [[New Gods|Mister Miracle]]. Given how the author's note at the end of the novel ends with an acknowledgment of Kirby, it's possible that Mister Miracle was also an influence.

* [[Gayngst]]: Sam Clay is a gay man in the 1940's...so it comes up in force, complete with the addition of Fredric Wertham and the congressional investigations into comicbooks in the 1950's. Ironically, he seems to be the only one ashamed of his sexuality, {{spoiler|and [[What the Hell, Hero?|ends up abandoning Tracy because of it]]}}.

* [[The Beard]]: {{spoiler|Sam to Rosa to cover up having Joe's baby out of wedlock. Rosa to Sam to cover up his Homosexuality, although she's not meant to know about it }}

* [[Hair of Gold]]: Tracy and Rosa. Both very wholesome love interests.

* [[Heroes Love Dogs]]: Justified {{spoiler|they are sled dogs after all}}

** Real comic book writers and artists from that era appear frequently.

** Joe saves [[Salvador Dali]] from suffocating inside a diving helmet.

* [[Shown Their Work]]

* [[Shoot the Dog]]: {{spoiler|Literally. Poor Oyster}}

* [[Super Dickery]]: The trope is outlined in full, with the Escapist participating in a classic example, when the book chronicles the 50's.

* [[Time Skip]]: {{spoiler|A few years during [[World War II]] and a whopping decade after. }}

* [[War Is Hell]]: Reconstructed {{spoiler|in a (mostly) non-combat situation. Joe is eager to fight the Nazis and pay them back for murdering his family, but, because he's a native German speaker, he [[Kicked Upstairs|ends up far away from the fighting intercepting radio transmissions]], at an outpost in [[Mysterious Antarctica]], where the only thing to fight is the harsh conditions. He sees all his comrades die, pointlessly, from a carbon monoxide leak. He does shoot one German-- who turns out to be a nice guy and not at all a Nazi.}}

* [[You Can't Go Home Again]]: Joe, in respect to both New York and Prague.

* [[You Have to Have Jews]]: Explains the preponderance of references explicit and implicit to Jewish culture in comics.