There is a popular saying and it goes "When in Rome do as the Roman." It means in order to be polite it is good to change the way you behave to imitate the culture or the people you are around. In the story "A Contract with God" by Will Eisner it tells the story of an immigrant named Frimme Hersh a Jewish-American as he copes with his life in America after he left Russia. In the story there are pictures that capture his gradual change from beginning to end. Through focus of the scenery, detail of the visuals and shading in background tell the story of his transformation from a pious, charitable person to a wealthy person who seems to have lost touch with his roots. Though this we will answer the question; is it always good to do what the Romans do? Or in other words; is changing your morals, your culture or your behavior to fit in to a different culture for better or worse the right thing to do.

Everyone owes their personality, way of thinking and culture to their place of origin whether that is a home town or country. The first picture I want to look at is at the top of Pg. 110 in the Carolina Reader. In this picture it shows Frimme saving a child while the attacking horsemen pillage the village. The picture while being in black and white is astonishingly detailed showing the whole scene while in contrast Frimme himself is not detailed at all. The action of saving the child shows that he is a selfless person as he did not care for being caught and slayed like some of the other villagers you see around the broken wall. The reason he is not detailed is because at this point in the story he was a selfless and the scene of the village was more important for the exposition and to set the scene. Focusing more on the scene and its use of lines on the background and on characters for shading generates a feeling of sorrow as the picture itself is grim. This grim scene is not one of complete fiction; people all over the world are being oppressed, repressed and put in dangerous situations. This causes them to become immigrants and immigrate to America like Frimme. The fact that immigrants like Frimme stayed religious, brave and charitable in environments like the one in the story is by way of a miracle. Unfortunately in the next scene that starts to change.

Just as events shape what people are, they can change who people become. This is shown in the pictures on page 115 and page 116. This is the climax of the story where the orphan girl he was left with dies. Even without reading the captions one can see that this is the point where everything changes because of the clear contrast between the first set of pictures and the picture on pg. 116. In the first set of pictures detail is put on Frimme and the girl with mostly blank backgrounds this is a move away from the village picture showing Frimme not being that important, to now him and his daughter now being the center of the story. On the other hand the next page the picture of Frimme receiving bad news while not having the detail of the village attack picture it does bring back the grim shading. This shading shows loss and sorrow, anyone who goes through the loss of something of real value will have their life and personal attitude change. That changes people in ways that can be positive or negative. Some of those people could start a charity to help people who went through the same thing they did. But in this case it changed Frimme for the bad.

Change is a funny thing; one can put as much work as they can into something to change it but they cannot decide how good, successful or liked it well become. As it seems for Frimme this seems to be true. He was the most religious, brave, selfless, charitable person in his village but once he lost the only thing of value to him all of those traits disappeared. On the bottom of pg. 120 it shows a Frimme that none of us could recognize by the features we remember of him. In this picture most of the detail in it is directed towards Frimme. Details like his hat, his shaven face, his fur jacket, the hair on his hands along with his knuckles and fingernails, most importantly his eyes. This is the first time we see his eyes in a detailed manner but they look like they belong to a person of obsession. From this detail you can also gather that he has left his faith completely with the removal of his beard and the lack of the kippah (Religious hat) that all the elders seem to be wearing. The background shows that Frimme coming back has a negative effect on the surrounding area shown in the background. In this picture it is completely black in stark comparison to the other pictures that use lines as a means of shading the background. Because we see the darkness centered on him we can gather that this darkness is emitting from him due to his obsession and greed. This change is definitely one that is for the bad and this is what people go through when they lose sight of where they come from.

Immigrants go through many more struggles that other people don't take into account. Immigrants do not choose to come to America because they want to. Immigrants come to America because of the fact that they cannot live in their home country due to circumstances that make it unsafe for them or their children. In the story Frimme was a religious, selfless and charitable person. This was because he lived in a village that did not have much and was being attacked often which made him who he is. When you take something or someone out of their environment they have to adapt making changes to themselves and who they are evident in Frimmes metamorphosis from who he was to who he is at the end of the story. No matter how devout you may be unforeseen circumstances can force you to become something you are not like the death of a loved one evident in Frimmes daughter's death. In the end is the freedom worth the change? Is it ok to do as the Romans do?

