Anagrams and Hidden Meanings in Lumberjanes

Vasili Birlidis
Category A, prompt C

Comic books are not known for their dialogue or written word, but Lumberjanes is unique in that it features several passages of longform writing as bookends for each issue (or in the trade paperback we read, "chapter"). However, the most obvious and essential literary device occurs within the illustrated adventure itself in Chapter Three: in trying to escape the ancient underground temple, the Lumberjanes encounter a wall of anagrams. Molly realizes that the foxes' warning from Chapter One - "beware the kitten holy" - is not a metaphor or pun, but an anagram for "in the tower by the lake."

Being a comic book aimed at younger audiences, Lumberjanes features a couple semi-educational sequences (especially in Chapter Three), including one about the Fibonacci sequence and this one on anagrams. It gently introduces the topic to readers while making it integral to the plot and therefore necessary. The anagram "in the tower by the lake" directly sets up all of Chapter Four, where the Lumberjanes escape from an all-boys' camp to explore the lighthouse tower.

Anagrams are an arrangement of letters that hide a true meaning. This concept of something veiling something else represents Lumberjanes' first volume as a whole. The Lumberjanes program name evokes a female lumberjack, aptly describing how Lumberjanes is a critique of both Girl Scouts USA and Boy Scouts of America's divided gender roles. Molly performs CPR on Mal after she almost drowns, saving her life but also thinly veiling what could be a lesbian kiss that might otherwise harm the book's sales nationwide early into the series' run (note the two characters' blushing). The replacing of "girls" with "hardcore lady-types" is humorous but also responds to the idea that girl is lingustically a lesser term for women, and "lady-types" may be a way of acknowledging transwomen and non-binary persons.

Lumberjanes packs a lot of visual satire and double meanings into its pages, but so far it has also exhibited careful use of the English language in a way that is often overlooked.

The Use of Epigraph’s in Lumberjanes

In Lumberjanes, the field manual chapter page before each new section of the graphic novel, describes and foreshadows the content of that section. For example, the first chapter is the “Up all Night” badge for which a Lumberjane must “have enjoyed the first wind of a new day with the moon above her head and without sleep, energetically explored the new possibility of viewing the world under the moon”. While the description of the badge that the manual provides does describe what the girls end up doing by the end of the chapter, in mentioning that a Lumberjane must learn “how to work against the unnatural and supernatural forces that a Lumberjane is bound to confront”, it is the brief quote below the name of the corresponding badge that is most telling of the adventure to come.

The first epigraph reads “Learn what goes bump in the night”, and accordingly it is the sound of the wolves that first sees all the girls together and launches their “all night” adventure. In the second section the epigraph reads “Because drowning is a scary way to go” and in the section Mal literally does drown and it is CPR (kind of but not really) that ends up saving her life.The manual reads the the “Naval Gauging Badge” requires that a Lumberjane, among other things, know how to “row, pole, scull, and steer a boat; also bring a boat properly alongside and make fast”, as well as “the importance of a life preserver, CPR, and the basic understanding of how to respond to emergency situations” skills which the girls use to rescue each other (although Ripley truly displays the best emergency response of all in her causal saving of Mal’s life). This use of this literary device in accompaniment with the field manual is present in each section and more often than not, an exact description of the events to come can be found on that manual page, although how those events come to pass is not nearly as predictable.