My Friend Dahmer

“He was a nobody. One of those shy kids who turned into social invalids when that first blast of adolescence hit, meekly accepted their fate, and became invisible.”

The narrator insists on Dahmer’s invisibility throughout the graphic novel/memoir. He positions Dahmer as a young man on the margin of society, both in school and beyond. The bolded words emphasize the key points of the narrator’s ideas: Dahmer is a social pariah, the panel containing the quote showing him alone and distracted, stressing his social status.

“Eastview was a teeming anthill of a school. Post-baby boom, the student population surged, far exceeding the building’s capacity […] If you were shy and slow to make friends, you were virtually trampled by the throng.”

Offering contextual information for the story (the spatial and temporal settings, which play a significant role in developing Dahmer’s character), the narrator also depicts a crowded environment unsuitable for maladjusted individuals. The school system’s inability to register Dahmer’s progression of illness is a constant motif in the novel, visually represented by singling out his character from the throng in the background.

“Joyce was a housewife who was chafing in that role, like many moms in the early seventies. She was always pleasant to me, but she was odd. Very moody and fragile.”

The narrator positions Dahmer’s mother Joyce as a key figure in her son’s development. Words like “odd,” “moody,” and “fragile” indicate a person unable to cope with reality, let alone take care of an adolescent boy suffering from mental illness. This quote’s visual is that of a woman resigned to and confounded by life.

“My friends and I, a small group of band nerds and advanced-placement brains, became fascinated by this strange guy who threw fake epileptic fits and mimicked the slurred speech and spastic tics of someone with cerebral palsy.”

While previous panels depicted Dahmer throwing fake fits, the panel bearing this quote portrays him as almost calm, with a blank look on his large face, his eyes nonexistent behind glasses—hinting at his dual nature. The narrator frames himself as a “band nerd,” signaling that his fascination with Dahmer’s behavior might be intellectual.

“He had an odd walk, arms straight at his sides, and shoulders thrust slightly forward. A distinctive gait…But what struck me most about Dahmer was that stony mask of a face, devoid of any emotion.”

According to the narrator’s description (and illustration), Dahmer should be attracting much more attention from the school, especially when he wears a “stony mask” instead of a boyish face. However, the emphasis is on the fact that no one pays attention to him. This observation comprises one of the main conceits of the novel, in which Dahmer falls through the cracks in the system—and that his killing spree might have been prevented had anyone reacted to his early signs of mental illness.

“Our interest in Dahmer may sound mean-spirited, but it really wasn’t. We weren’t putting him down. After all, we weren’t a whole lot higher up the social ladder. He genuinely amused us, that’s all.”

In this panel (as in most others), the narrator illustrates Dahmer as a passive figure, as if caught by accident. This speaks to Dahmer’s so-called invisibility as well as the fact that even the narrator only has a passing interest in him. Backderf’s interest as an author is largely retroactive. However, he admits to feeling amused by Dahmer’s odd antics, which speaks to his character as a young man.

“Being gay was a painful realization for any teenager back then, even more so for a kid from a very proper small town. It was a sexual awakening full of doubt and denial and shame. But for Dahmer, it was far, far worse.”

This quote deals with the negative feelings associated with Dahmer’s discovery of his own sexuality—and the obsession it brings about. The panel is mostly dark, his eyes in shade and invisible, as if to erase his personality. This is particularly significant as the panel indicates Dahmer is observing a passing jogger, the object of his dangerous fantasy. The narrator indicates that Dahmer being gay in a patriarchal society contributed to his sense of alienation and isolation.

“What spawned this perverse sexual hunger? What deep, fetid part of his psyche gurgled up this miscreant desire, so powerfully voracious it immediately devoured him whole? Dahmer himself was at a loss to explain its origin.”

This quote refers to Dahmer’s desire to possess the dead bodies of men as his lovers; specifically, it refers to interviews given by Dahmer himself (and cited at the end of the novel). The narrator utilizes these sources as a way of portraying Dahmer’s psyche and representing his obsessions both visually and textually. The quote’s use of diction is of interest as it differs from the novel’s overall language, being florid, expressive and almost lyrical in its depiction of Dahmer’s disturbing behavior.

“Some instinct warned me off. I was always wary of Dahmer. I was willing to hang out with him at school, but there was no way I was going to forge a closer friendship.”

This quote leaves the reader wondering whether the idea expressed is the narrator’s thought process at the time, or the work of hindsight. Backderf represents himself as always having been wary of Dahmer (which is exaggerated in this panel using foreground and background, with the narrator being closer to the reader and Dahmer being caught in passing). The nature of memoirs is such that authors cannot fully trust the reliability of their memories, as humans tend to “correct” them over time. The narrator doesn’t show any awareness of this process.

“I’m often asked why I never spoke up. Why I didn’t try to get Dahmer help. You have to remember, this was 1976. You never ‘narced’ on a classmate. It simply wasn’t done. Besides, my friends and I, we were just clueless small-town kids, wrapped up in our own lives.”

This quote uses visual and textual juxtaposition: While the narrator attempts to justify his own inaction, the visuals show Dahmer’s loneliness and defeated state of mind. The motif of missed opportunities, of saving Dahmer from himself and others, is reflected in the boy’s isolation. The narrow and small window illustrates Dahmer’s inability to see the big picture and admire the light of day as the panel’s lettering hovers in the blackness above said window.

“Dahmer knew full well that his sexual urges were sick and twisted. But there was no one he could turn to for help. It was his nightmare alone. ‘It was unsharable,’ he later explained. The constant thoughts of corpses and entrails titillated Dahmer, but also filled him with revulsion and a growing sense of panic. How could he make these hellish fantasies stop?”

Again, Backderf utilizes available interviews with Dahmer to provide the reader with a glimpse into his state of being, retroactively linking these thoughts to a teenage Dahmer. In the first panel bearing this quote, his profile is visible in semi-shadow and from mid-distance, as if hope still exists for him to be saved. However, the following panel depicts his face as a black square (with only his glasses reflecting outside light) at a distance, indicating that there is no person to save anymore—accentuated by the phrase ‘there was no one he could turn to.’ The quote’s diction is vivid and detailed, eliciting Dahmer’s own sense of revulsion.

“How did he get away with being stinking drunk during school hours? It still blows my mind. Every kid knew what Dahmer was doing…but not a single teacher or school administrator noticed a thing. Not one. Were they really that oblivious? Or was it that they just didn’t want to be bothered?”

In portraying Dahmer as a completely black presence for the first time in the novel, the narrator asks a crucial question: Where does the social responsibility for someone like Dahmer lie, and what are the causes of a lack of such responsibility? Backderf portrays Dahmer as isolated, but the issue is that he should not have been. Many systems are in place to prevent this from happening and yet, they all failed both Dahmer and his future victims.

“But if Dahmer was a tragic figure, and I maintain he was…he wasn’t an entirely sympathetic one.”

In this quote, Backderf speaks to Dahmer being a primarily tragic figure, a victim of mental illness and a society who did not care enough to intervene. Although he takes care to emphasize that Dahmer was not a “sympathetic” victim (the visuals show him laughing at a boy’s nasty fall), he insists that Dahmer’s crimes might have and should have been prevented, if he lived in a different time or under different circumstances.

“But Jeff no longer used his clubhouse. He now took his carcasses deep into the neighboring woods, where he could engage in his grisly avocation in secret, far from curious kids. He didn’t bother dissolving his roadkill finds anymore…He stripped the flesh off the bones by hand!”

This quote relays the gradual progression of Dahmer’s murderous intent. There’s usually an incremental increase in the severity of serial offenders’ crimes, and Backderf implies the same applies to Dahmer. The final line ends with an exclamation point, which the novel captures via the gleam of Dahmer’s knife, almost as if showing it to the reader—with clear implications that violence is imminent.

“At the pivotal moment when Jeff needed them most, his parents were totally consumed with their breakup. Their vicious battle inflicted deep emotional scars on their disturbed son. His world was crumbling…Along with his sanity.”

This quote’s bolded words are adjectives and nouns with powerful implications for a crucial period in Dahmer’s life—within which his family falls apart instead of recognizing the boy’s descent and offering support. This furthers Backderf’s idea that all systems of support failed Dahmer, thus failing to prevent him from murdering. Dahmer’s family, his school, and his friends—no one registered his turmoil. In this panel, the visual of his crying mother with her back turned, and Dahmer walking away—his face passive and eyes hidden behind his glasses—all imply that the battle for his sanity is already lost.

“Whatever personality he once had was gone. He was either in character, or drunk, or both. I honestly can’t recall having a normal conversation with him during our senior year. Not one. Dahmer didn’t register as a real person. He moved through the day unnoticed.”

The gradual loss of Dahmer’s personality continues in strange ways: He often adopts the persona of his mother’s interior decorator and spends most of his time in school heavily intoxicated. Backderf finalizes the process by stating that Dahmer no longer “registers as a real person.” This is supported by the visuals with one panel showing a close-up of Dahmer’s face in mid-performance. The second panel offers a bird’s eye view of him exiting a classroom, his eyes hidden behind glasses; in the third, he’s placed in the foreground, profile, ever the observer instead of the observed.

“The horror show in his head couldn’t be switched off. He was hanging onto his sanity by the thinnest thread.”

As in this quote, the narrator often enters Dahmer’s mind and guesses his thoughts, almost as if he’s presenting an omniscient point of view. It’s worth noting that Backderf’s persona reaches conclusions based not only on his own experience with Dahmer but different sources listed at the end of the novel. Thus, it is debatable how reliable the narrator is when it comes to thoughts pertaining to Dahmer. The image in the quoted panel shows Dahmer (typically from the back) reaching his house, where we know lies the crux of his issues: The house represents both his dread and the locus of his fantasies, foreshadowing his first murder later on.

“Each of us in the Dahmer fan club had a moment when the realization hit that Dahmer was not just odd, but truly scary. This was my moment. I’d never seen someone drink like that, gulping can after can. My skin crawled as I watched him. The aura of doom that surrounded Dahmer finally came into focus for me, with a startling clarity.”

The narrator again uses strong diction and vivid imagery (“skin crawling,” “aura of doom”) to indicate a moment of epiphany—that of Dahmer’s dangerous nature. The reliability of the narrator’s memory is arguable, as is usually the case with memoirs and memoir-like fiction (which possesses a strong tendency to editorialize and rewrite according to the narrator’s stance at the moment of writing). The quoted panels depict Dahmer with harsh lines that make him seem much older, his eyes still invisible, and his stance stiff and unnatural.

“Dahmer was out of the picture. We filled our repartee with Dahmerisms and endlessly aped his spaz shtick, but Dahmer himself was no longer included in the fun.”

Backderf utilizes a parallel image to the one on page 84 (Important Quote #13) to indicate that the only constant in Dahmer’s life is his drinking behind the school. Dahmer becomes even more of a recluse as his former friends finally recognize something uncontrollable within him. The narrator implies that even though his friends might not have been aware of what it was that frightened them, they knew that Dahmer was not well in any sense of the word.

“For Dahmer, this universal teenage rite was an anemic grab at normalcy. But he couldn’t pull it off. He was too far gone. Dahmer fled. He spent the evening at a nearby McDonald’s…alone.”

Dahmer’s attempt to attend the graduation prom reads as a tragic and desperate move to appear and feel “normal,” despite his descent into madness. The narrator depicts the scene with dark tones, indicating Dahmer’s sense of hopelessness, and denies the reader a closer look at his full face even now. Dahmer leaving the prom represents his leaving the apparent normalcy of everyday life behind—he no longer possesses the ability to blend in or even co-exist unnoticed among others. This is accentuated by every strobe light at prom failing to capture Dahmer’s form and falling in shallow circles around him.

“‘I’m leaving, Jeff. Our father and I…our divorce will be finalized soon. I’ve…decided to move back to Wisconsin with your brother. I want to be near my family again…and start a new life. There’s nothing for me here. I have to get out of Bath. Your dad is getting the house. You’ll be ok here by yourself until he moves back in.”

Ever the passive listener and observer, Dahmer looks on as his mother almost casually informs him of her decision to leave him behind. In the first panel, Joyce’s face appears crude and almost inhuman; in the second, she appears from behind, already a distant memory. The reader can assume Dahmer’s looking at his mother, but yet again, his eyes are hidden.

“His life essentially ended on this day. He soon shed his humanity forever. The person I knew became something utterly unknowable. The rest of his life would be a living hell.”

As high school ends, so ends the single, albeit loose, hold Dahmer had on his life and self-control. The school bus drives him away from school for the last time, his face visible from a distance, then in middle ground, and lastly in close-up—only to gain darkness with every cut. The reader finally sees his eyes, half-closed and devoid of expression. The words “living hell” align with his eyes and indicate the horror that lies behind them and in Dahmer’s future.

“Dahmer, of course, was one of those I discarded. I don’t even recall the last time I saw Jeff. The final day of school? At the commencement ceremony? I have no clear memory. And even though he remained in bath off and on for the next year, I never ran into him when I was home for break. It was as if Dahmer simply dissolved into memory, just as he had so often mysteriously dematerialized at Revere High School.”

The narrator leaves his old life behind, and with it, the memory of a strange friend with whom he shared some high school days. The fact that Dahmer “dissolves” into oblivion indicates his essential lack of character and personability, but also speaks to the narrator not giving him a second glance—which he admits to. The panel depicts a car facing the reader and two large pools of light spilling from headlights; the narrator has a bright future ahead of him while Dahmer remains behind in darkness.