Importance of Color in Asterios Polyp

I want to touch on something we briefly discussed today in class, Mazzucchelli’s use of color. In the first few pages, everything is mostly in the color blue. Later on in the book we realize that blue signifies Asterios’s past (specifically Asterios himself in the past). While he is watching his old video tapes, everything is blue suggesting he is watching the videos to lamenting his past. As soon as the lightening strikes, we are taken to purple and yellow, the colors that would signify Asterios’s present life. As we work our way through the book we see that Hana represents the color of red. Going through Asterios’s past, we see that there are moments in which Asterios and Hana are both red and blue, possibly meaning very close moments the two of them shared. When their colors contrasted greatly, they were often at odds with one another. What I think Mazzuchelli does the best is how he uses color at the end. Spoiler Alert: As Asterios begins his journey to find Hana in Minnesota, the two color worlds slowly begin to combine. He makes the realization that he needs to find her and from that moment on, the color schemes become one, and the closer Asterios gets to Hana’s house, the more of the color spectrum we begin to see. Just some food for thought.