Nicolas Cinquegrani's The Big Kahn

"The truth will set you free" is a quote of Bible scripture that is often taken out of context and thus used entirely incorrectly. Even so, at first, it would be difficult to see the validity of this quote in the story of The Big Kahn, a sequential drama by Neil Kleid and illustrated by Nicolas Cinquegrani which narrates a story of a Jewish family weighed down by its father's heaviest lie. Everyone reacts negatively when faced with the truth of rabbi David Kahn, they feel shocked and even betrayed by the man they thought was their moral compass and leader. However, some people see this lie as unacceptable and are unable to move beyond the fact of it, while others come to accept the lie, internalize it, and have a greater understanding of …show more content…
Three consecutive panels show the father's coffin being lowered into the ground. However, these panels progressively zoom out from the scene from above, taking us further and further away from the ground. When people are lowered into graves, it usually is peaceful, if solemn, and often they take their secrets down with them, six feet beneath the earth. But with his brother Roy coming in and disturbing the funeral procession, the burial scene is anything but at repose, and by exposing David Kahn's lifetime secret, Roy opens up a can of worms. The zooming out of the panels shows how uncertainty rather than resolution is brought upon by the father's death, that the direction that the story will now take is up in the air. The members of David's congregation feel betrayed at his deception, and begin to reject his family. While he had built up their synagogue from the ground and had enriched it by serving as its rabbi, upon hearing of his secret, the congregation all too quickly grew disillusioned. The father's reputation as rabbi cannot be looked to as a reason for his people's abandonment; he -- and his family -- was extremely respected while he …show more content…
Also unlike his sister, he receives several challenges to his preconceived notions of faith, and has to reconcile these all the while finding his place in the world. After the first visit by Roy Dobbs, his sister questions Avi, asking him what their uncle has to gain by lying about their father. In that panel, Avi appears to be diverting his eyes, and his face appears to be illuminated from the direction of his sister. His sister presents a plausible theory, but at this time is too impossible for him to accept as a truth. At this point, he is unable to let go of his image of his father, the man who taught him everything he knew about his religion and himself. After being ousted by the counsel, Avi finds himself in his office, recalling a time when his father was talking to him. His father claimed that first impressions were the most important thing when dealing with people, that if pulled off correctly, one will have their faith forever. The son, however, is disillusioned, for the exposure of his father’s lie revealed that this all too untrue. Being perhaps the closest person to his father, he is potentially the most damaged. Alone in his office, he shouts “you’re lying!” while flinging and toppling books of religious teaching from a bookshelf. At the end of this, he is slouching literally in a collapsed heap of his own faith. His spirituality is