The goal of this bachelor’s thesis is to characterise indirect
testimony as used in comics by means of an analysis of three
graphic works involving testimony from the Second World War.
The theoretical basis of the thesis presents the development of
comics ranging from their origins through to classic comics and
on to the era of the so-called graphic novel, which the three
analysed works belong to. The analytical section initially
concerns itself with the circumstances which led to the
publication of these works and subsequently looks at the role
of the character who provides the readers with testimony from a
wartime survivor. The lives of the surviving witnesses are
subsequently described in three stages: their situation before
the war, their fate during the war and their lives after the
war. The second section of the analysis focusses on the formal
aspects of the studied works. It initially looks at their
format and internal structure, while the amount of text and its
importance and specific linguistic phenomena are a subsequent
subject of analysis. The graphic aspect of the works, i.e. the
graphic layout of the pages, the type of drawing and the use of
colour or the presence of symbolism in the works, has also been
analysed at the end of the section. The conclusion of the work
involves a synthesis of the individual results of the research
and the presentation of the characteristics of indirect
testimony, which could be generally applied to comics of this
type.