Vertigo (wordless novel)
At 230 wood engravings Vertigo was Ward's longest and most complex wordless novel, and proved to be the last he finished—in 1940 he abandoned one he was working on, and in the last years of his life began another that he never finished.
As the Great Depression deepens, her lover moves away and ceases to contact her, and her father loses his job with the Eagle Corporation of America.
His search for work becomes increasingly desperate, and he considers turning to crime; he manages to make some money donating blood to the Elderly Gentleman.
[9] Nückel's only work in the genre, Destiny told of the life and death of a prostitute in a style inspired by Masereel's, but with a greater cinematic flow.
[9] He continued with Madman's Drum (1930), Wild Pilgrimage (1932), Prelude to a Million Years (1933), and Song Without Words (1936), the last of which he made while engraving the blocks for Vertigo.
[11] Ward had strong socialist sympathies and was a supporter of organized labor; the Boy expresses this union solidarity by abandoning the only job he could find rather than work as a strikebreaker.
[18] The images are more realistic and finely detailed than in Ward's previous wordless novels,[1] and display a greater sense of balance of contrast and whitespace, and crispness of line.
[18] Ward employs symbols such as a rose, which takes different meanings in different contexts: creative beauty for the Girl, an item for purchase for the Elderly Gentleman.
[17] Ward displays discontinuous contrasts throughout the book: the Girl stretches herself out nude and carefree in a chapter of her section, while in his the Elderly Gentleman sadly views his worn-out naked form in a mirror.
Though the Elderly Gentleman's actions are at the heart of the misery of his workers, Ward depicts him with sympathy, sad, lonely, and alienated despite his wealth and charity.
[27] Reviewer for the Evening Independent Bill Wiley proclaimed it "a dramatic story in a brilliant medium" that "will leave a vivid memory with the reader long after many novels in words are forgotten".
[29] Vertigo was the last wordless novel Ward was to complete,[14] and has come to be seen as his masterpiece;[10] cartoonist Art Spiegelman called it "a key work of Depression-era literature".
