Read entirety of Fun Home. Select 1 scene and analyze it closely (image and language) as a way of discussing its broader significance to the text as a whole. Situate your analysis within a framed claim (question) you’re asserting about the text. 1 page, single-spaced. Please post here by Noon, 3/5.
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Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, emphasizes the presence of her parents perpetuates the play-like, unreal nature of her childhood and illuminates that only in the absence of her parents as an adult can her life be real. Towards the middle of the text, Alison’s summer unravels to be a series of running lines with her mother, and then without her parents, having fun explorations with her brothers. These scenes are complementary to one another; as she practices a play with her mother it enhances the playful, make-believe nature of her with her siblings. There is no room left for a boundary between the play with her mother and living her real life. As she transitions from childhood into adolescence, she is pulled back in by her parents and her life is blurred to appear as a play itself.
Within this series of unfolding events, there is one scene of Alison sitting with her mother on their porch practicing lines. As Alison sits facing her mother and mirrors her, there is a distinct disconnect between the two of them. The furniture on the porch, the banisters, and the backyard is identical for each of them, however the separation of the scene from Alison in one box and her mother in the other illustrates the true distance between them. The scene portrays how they are sharing a space and still isolated from one another in order to be individuals.
The exchange of liens between the two is powerfully fitting to the text as a whole: “I have lost both my parents” Alison reads, and her mother responds with, “Both? That seems like carelessness”. The two lines, although part of a play, ironically align with the family situation; Alison has lost both of her parents as they are not present in her life. By virtue of her parents isolating themselves with their individual pursuits, Alison is neglected, yet still called upon to be part of their play. She is trapped in their scene and cannot live fully herself.
Throughout the text, Alison and her mother seldom have moments alone. As this moment is one shared by Alison and her mother, the question of “both?” holds significance. Alison’s father is clearly shown throughout the text to be absent from Alison’s life unless her needs her to be an extension of his arm. By having Helen question “both?”, it displays the surprise and realization of how absent she is as well from Alison’s life. The hyper focus of the relationship between Alison and her father is removed; there is a greater effect that the relationship, or lack thereof, with both of her parents has on her life.
The second part of the response, “that seems like carelessness”, expresses a two-part meaning. It can be either carelessness on the fault of the parents, or on Alison’s part for losing them. The cold-read of the line emphasizes the numb reaction to losing both parents; it is accepted as normal and taken as truth.
This scene between Alison and her mother highlights the way in which her life is like a play. Her childhood is structured as her father sets it, her mother continues with the running lines that hold Alison back from being herself. When Alison is with her parents, whether they are absence physically or not from her life, she is set in the lines of another character that is not herself, only when she is alone and an adult can she break free from these lines and write her own story.
In the book “Fun Home”, author Alison Bechdel explores to great depth the concept of self-identification with a parent. Throughout the entirety of the book, we see Bechdel as the narrator drawing parallels between herself and her father. For a number of different reasons, including interests, sexuality, and even taste in literature, Bechdel sees herself in her father in a number of ways. Despite the clarity of this parallel, Bechdel provides ample evidence to show how intensely different her and her father really are. So how then is the nature of a familial bond expressed? On what grounds can one identify themselves in a parent? Based on the book, one can identify themselves in a parent without maintenance of a strong relationship with that parent, with certain clear identifying features being integral to this identification. In the case of Bechdel and her father, this feature is homosexuality.
A key event in the story in relation to the nature of identification with one’s parent can be seen on pages 220-221. In this scene, Bechdel gets her father to open up, so that she may discuss with him the true nature of her sexuality for the first time ever in person. Despite having explored the similarities between their experiences in sexuality earlier in the book, Bechdel’s characterization of her father as an unloving, unsentimental man makes it very clear to the reader that this event is of great importance. Both Bechdel and her father appear to identify as gay, with both going through a period of confusion and isolation and discomfort with that fact. Despite these similarities, Bechdel and her father approach and accept their sexuality in very different ways. In the scene on pages 220-221, this sense of confusion in their similar, yet vastly different understanding of their own sexualities is evident. To begin, the structure of the images is uniform throughout the entirety of these two pages, having 12 equally sized panels on both pages, which is an unusual structure for this novel. As the reader, having read up to that point, it is easy to recognize that Bechdel is straying from her typical form, which generates a sort of awkward tone, like something in this exchange in different than in all the others. Ironically, this awkward disparity arises in that it is so uniform, it’s the simplicity of such normal structure that really unsettles the reader. In tandem with this, each of the 24 panels between pages 220-221 are of a very similar image, a side-angled shot of Bechdel riding in the passenger seat as her father drives them to the movie theater. With the exception of a few turns of the head, or a lifted arm, this scene remains in exact form for the duration of these 2 pages. This style of uniformity creates a feeling of similarity and continuity, which clearly extends to Bechdel and her father. The use of this uniformed disparity continues the development of this form of awkwardness within normality and uniformity. Bechdel and her father are so similar, yet their lack of a strong, or even stable relationship makes it very difficult for them to understand these similarities and discuss them in a comfortable manner.
In addition to the structure of the panels on pages 220-221, the dialogue placed within them also provides integral insight into the difficult nature of the relationship between Bechdel and her father. First, we can see the discomfort in the situation developed by the choice to divide basic dialogue into different panels. For example, between panels 2 and 6 of page 220, Bechdel’s father responds to a question that Bechdel asks, and he is evidently startled in doing so. After Bechdel asks him of his intentions when he had given her a book with content regarding sexuality, he responds saying “What? / Oh. / I didn’t [know what I was doing when I gave you that book], really. / / It was just a guess.” This simple dialogue, when read in broken form amidst multiple panels is of remarkably disrupted rhythm, and the reader is able to recognize this awkwardness. And even further, Bechdel includes a panel in the middle of the father’s response that is entirely blank, showing the break in conversation, and the tension in the air. Yet again, in the wake of this awkward, rough relationship there lays clear parallels. Such as on page 221 when Bechdel’s father states “When I was little, I really wanted to be a girl. / I’d dress up in girls’ clothes.” and then Bechdel herself responds with immediate exclamation “I wanted to be a boy! I dressed in boys’ clothes!” The reader can see within Bechdel the immediate excitement she feels upon identification with her father, yet this excited response ends the conversation, with her father uncomfortably retreating back into his sheltered silence. In this expression of the dialogue between Bechdel and her father, the reader can once again see the awkward similarities that the two possess. We can see the way in which Bechdel and her father have so much in common, but their uncultivated relationship just won’t allow for those similarities to be explored. But even though they lack this relationship, Bechdel identifies herself within her father nonetheless.
Fahmid Rashid
3/5/19
Fun Home Response
How does Alison Bechdel portray an emotional divide between her parents and herself?
Fun Home is described as a ‘tragicomic’, which refers to manifesting both tragic and comic aspects – an apt description for the book which portrays Alison Bechdel’s dysfunctional relationship with her family, specifically her father. In a way, it is also a memorial of Bechdel’s father.. Bechdel reflects on how eerily similar she and her father were “we were inversions of one another”. The ups and downs of their relationship are seen throughout, and we see that as Bechdel gets older she gets a stronger understanding of what kind of person her father is.
However, one scene from the entire book that stuck out was Alison’s hesitation to kiss her father goodnight. This single scene can be said to encapture Bechdel and her father’s relationship as a whole. Still in the first chapter of the book, this lack of endearment and fear of it foreshadows some of the tribulations the speaker had to go through growing up; ‘If we couldn’t criticize my father, showing affection for him was an even dicier venture”. Bechdel even writes about the lack of affection in her family “We were not a physically expressive family, to say the least. But once I was unaccountable moved to kiss my father good night”. The paradox between her father hitting her in the previous page and her inexplicable desire to kiss him good night in the following page highlights just how troubling this father-daughter relationship is. This is further emphasized by Bechdel’s reaction to the attempt “…All I managed was to grab his hand and buss the knuckles lightly…/…As if he were a bishop or an elegant lady, before rushing from the room in embarrassment.”
While this lack of endearment is largely portrayed through Bechdel’s relationship with her father, it is seen at various points through her interactions with her mother as well. While nowhere nearly as intense as with her father, Bechdel’s mother at often times is also seen to be rather harsh. For example, in Chapter 2 as Bechdel points out the reluctancy in her father’s family to stray away from where they lived, her mother makes a remark about moving away “Don’t you kids get any ideas…./After you graduate from high school, I don’t want to see you again.” The lack of expression in the drawing of her mother almost gives this comment a rather grim and somber tone, which is seen pretty much throughout the entire book. This lack of expression in her mother’s face further highlights the emotional divide between both of Bechdel’s parents and herself.
Addison
3/5/19
Fun Home Response
Throughout Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Alison struggles with feeling like her life is a side note compared to her father’s. Bruce rules the house with an iron grip and not surprisingly, it is the funeral house and not their actual home that receives the nickname Fun Home. Bruce is, at the core of his being, an artistic man, and yet he leaves no room for creativity in their museum of a home. He treats family life with the same desensitized focus with which he treats his work as a mortician.
Compared to the vast, prized collection of objects in the museum, Alison feels like an afterthought. During the scene where Bruce asks her to hang a mirror in her room, she looks back upon this time with the direct analysis, “I grew to resent the way my father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture” (14). In this house, Bruce can almost be who he wants but he never quite reaches inner peace because of a fear of sharing his secret with the family. In the same mirror scene, Alison mentions that when she grows up, her “house is going to be all metal, like a submarine” (14). As she says this, she makes a shifty sideways glance as if to provoke her father. She can’t fight him head on, but she can make it known that she is unhappy. She wants to make it clear that she, a masculine woman, doesn’t fit into this feminine man’s world. Furthermore, as she hangs the mirror, Bruce’s reflection stares at the reader to convey his control. The mirror, and Bruce, are center stage while Alison is a prop. This same principle is illustrated earlier, on page six. Bruce stands in the foreground, alone except for the magnificent potted plant that he fastidiously arranges while saying “slightly perfect” (6). The picture or painting of another potted flower arrangement continues to emphasize Bruce’s obsession with beauty which is in direct opposition to Alison’s own obsessive nature. Whereas he exudes an artistic confidence, Alison writes “I think” in her journal over and over just to make sure that her perspective is known as subjective. During this scene, it’s only in the background (a whole other room) that Alison and her brother sit.
Bruce must be the center of attention. Later, once Alison tells her parents that she is gay, her father feels compelled to upstage her again with finally conveying his own sexuality. He is a student whose ego forces him to be viewed as the teacher. This conflict between Alison and her father is only amplified by the fact that they are so similar. Alison managed to escape the same fate as Bruce by starting to open up about who she is instead of staying closeted. After his death, she still feels trapped by the legacy he left behind.
Professor Cassarino
Lit borders
Joe Levitan
4 March 2019
Fun Home Response
In the graphic novel, Fun Home, Allison Bechdel describes her unique and arduous relationship with her father. Both individuals struggle with their identity, albeit in different ways, and the relationship they have is centered around these internal struggles.
Allison and her father’s relationship was far from traditional. Bechdel rarely mentions her father’s name throughout the story. This supports the divide and lack of human connection that the two have. On page 220 there is a scene where Allison and her father are driving to the theatre. This scene is a monumental moment in the story because it is the first-time father is open about his past to Allison. Allison and her father have a conversation about how they’re both homosexual, a massive quality that they should be able to bond over. Throughout the graphic novel Alisson’s father has been depicted as cold, stoic, and sometimes not even fully drawn on the page; lacking eyes or being a silhouette. In this scene, where there is true “connection” between the two, father is drawn completely. The shade in this scene is black and blue which gives a lifeless feel to the reader. Also, there are twenty-four individual boxes that make up the scene which visually shows the divide present in their interaction.
Allison initiates the conversation by asking her father about a letter he wrote her in response to her letter where she revealed her queerness to him. After Allison presented this question, she “kept still, like he was a splendid deer I didn’t want to startle” (220). From Allison describing her father as a “splendid deer” it is apparent that she views him more as this fragile and confused person rather than her father. Father doesn’t look at Allison once this scene. Although he is driving and paying attention to the road, the act of him not looking at his daughter furthers the disconnect that is obviously present. Father reveals that “When I was little, I really wanted to be a girl” (221). When the father states this massively revealing statement to daughter there is absolutely no emotion in his face whatsoever. He is numb from his life and even in saying his deepest truth he feels nothing. The irony in this scene is that all the while Allison and her father are having this awkward yet real interaction, they are on their way to the theatre. A place where people dress up and act as characters, live lives other than their own, live in fantasy worlds. This represents father quest to live a life opposing his reality.
This scene by Bechdel represents the physical and emotional divide between father and herself. And, more importantly, the continuous quest that father has to live a life different that the one he is living.
On page 225, Bechdel describes the last time she saw her father. The scene represents several kinds of borders in Bechdel’s life. Her family meets Joan, Bechdel’s girlfriend, for the first time and discusses Bechdel’s close relationship with her father. This marks the intersection between the end of Bechdel’s life with her father and a turning point in Bechdel’s acceptance of her sexuality.
The page ends with an image of Bechdel and her father sharing a piano bench, playing “Heart and Soul” -. Bechdel puts the reader outside for this last image, creating a caricature of family unity that even Norman Rockwell would find cliched. This image serves several purposes. First, the pair are put back into the motif of the the antique mansion. As Bechdel points out in the early pages of Fun Home, the house is a sham in many ways. Bechdel’s father painstakingly revived the house from dilapidation to fit his pretense of aristocracy. On page 7, this pretense is mocked when Bruce is shown hunched over, carrying a wooden pillar – a reference to the image of Jesus carrying the cross on which he was to be crucified. This reference fits Bruce. While the house was his salvation and his legacy, it was also a prison. Bruce’s idealization of historic aristocracy fuses his ‘feminine’ traits with the masculine image he wants. The house represents the person he wants to be, or at least the person he wants others to see.
The conversation on page 225 also reveals a paradox in Bechdel’s story. A family friend comments on Bechdel’s “unusual” close relationship with her father. Above the image of the two on the piano bench, Bechdel narrates “It was unusual, and we were close. But not close enough.” This image finally describes the duality of Bechdel’s relationship with her father. On one hand, they are objectively close. The two remain in correspondence throughout college and share personal details with each other, even if this is only through coded references to literature. While they may not be as intimate as Bechdel had wanted, and while this relationship may be flawed and tumultuous because of Bruce’s personal issues, it is undeniable that the two shared a relationship. In the first chapter, on page 23, Bechdel seems to address this. She writes “It’s true that he didn’t kill himself until I was nearly twenty. But his absence resonated retrospectively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” Bechdel sees Bruce’s suicide as a kind of betrayal, an action that ultimately reframes every element of their lives. This isn’t to say that Bechdel is ‘wrong’ about the nature of their relationship. But the duality in her childhood and early adulthood is undeniable until his death, which forces her to observe the past predominantly through the lens of his absence.
What does the motif of the restored mansion reveal about Bechdel’s relationship with her father?
Zachary Maluccio
March 5, 2019
Fun Home Response
The relationship between Bechdel and her father could best be captured on page 204, when she returns home and tells her father of her plans to study Ulysses by James Joyce. Although it was clearly not her first choice, Bechdel’s decision to take her J-Term course (also, shout out to schools with J-Terms) on Ulysses “elates” her dad, who gives her a long set of books to read in congruence with the Joyce novel.
The first point of emphasis is that Bechdel’s so-called excited father appears nothing out of the ordinary. Bechdel makes a clear point of showing that there was no difference in her father’s temperament, whether he was happy, sad, bored, anything. The only exception to this rule, as we learned early into the book, was anger, which her father clearly had plenty. As for this scene in particular, the fact that his glee over his daughter’s choice to read his favorite book comes with no discernible emotion is a testament to their relationship as a whole. At one point, Bechdel describes it as “nonchalant,” but I do not feel that is entirely accurate. There is almost a sense that Bechdel’s father has forgotten how to portray his happiness in times like these after years, decades even, of frustration and self-resentment. Bechdel concedes that she does not know the full extent of her father’s sexuality, but at a minimum, Mr. Bechdel was clearly unhappy with his life of choice, which leads to the exchange we find on page 204.
In addition, the way Bechdel responds to her father’s is also telling of the nature of their relationship. The difficulties that Bechdel gave her dad during her childhood stem into her lack of interest in his field of study now. During the scene in question, Mr. Bechdel offers his daughter his personal copy of Ulysses, as well as some additional reading for background knowledge. In the moment, Bechdel feels fortunate to have her father’s attention; she views with a certain sense of nostalgia, as though she knows this will most likely not happen again for a long time. However, by the time she returns to college, the effects of her father’s attention has worn off, and she brushes his books aside for her more interesting reads. In part, this is due to the mundane way that her professor approached the class. At a deeper level, though, it signifies the relationship between Bechdel and her father as a whole: short breaths of love and understanding, long journeys of cold and solitude.
Q: How does the nature of the Bechdel’s relationship with her father change from the start of the book to the finish?
Arthur Romero da Veiga Martins
March 4, 2019
Response to Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home
Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” is a eulogy to her ambiguous relationship to her father. The story revolves around Bechdel’s coming to terms with his suicide, his sexuality, but also her past and her feelings about growing up. As her appreciation of her father mutates over time, going from a bitter resentment to an acknowledgement of their similarity, the idea the appearances not matching the truth remains constant. In the opening sequence of the book, Bechdel illustrates her distance to her father as something elusive and yet overwhelmingly present. Drawing from mythological parallels to introduce her family and father, Bechdel incorporates the emotional divide into her text.
The opening sequence introduces the myth of Icarus and attributes it to the father’s personality. Correlating his character to mythology reinforces how distant the father is from Alison’s and the family’s reality. It portrays him as somewhat supernatural, removing certain aspects of his humanity, and replacing them with the qualities of Icarus and Daedalus. A striking image is the portrayal of his passion in the bottom of page 7. Bechdel evokes the mythological character of her father and attributes his talent as ‘libidinal, manic, martyred’, qualifiers that foreshadow the discovery of his lust, emotional distress, and suicide. The ‘passion’ reference, combined with the picture of him carrying a wooden pillar, alludes to Christ’s Passion, further reinforcing an idea of an idealized martyr.
While she praises her father’s ‘dazzling display of artfulness’ as he restores their house, Bechdel portrays the father as a lonely, self-absorbed person, which is also manifested in the form of the illustrations. The images often show the father invested in restoration and consumed by it. In the bottom of page 9, for instance, he is alone in a striking position fixing the roof. When he interacts with the other family members, his cold relationship to them is portrayed by painting his blasé demeanor, marked by indifference and fear. The narrator employs mythology here to draw a contrast between her and the father. On page 15, she introduces a series of opposing images, such as being the Sparta to his Athens, the ‘modern to his Victorian’, signaling their fundamental differences. These images paint the father as physically distant or emotionally indifferent to Alison, such as the one in which he reads and she shoots a toy gun.
Despite her saying that hers is ‘just a house’, the allegory of the house remits to an idea that appearances often hide a deeper truth. Reflecting on the fact her dad had ‘sex with teenage boys’, the narrator alludes to her family as being a ‘sham’ and her house a museum. This is a motif that is further explored in the text. When Alison and her father are trying out suits, for example, this image highlights how both of them would try to highlight an aspect of their respective femininity and masculinity in one another. The house, in turn, presented, to outsiders, an image of perfection that was far-removed from their reality. Introducing these contradictions, “Fun Home” defies conventions of genre and invites the reader not to make assumptions based of appearances alone.
Kelly Campa
March 4, 2019
Fun Home Response
On page 114, Allison discovers a massive black rat snake while on a camping trip with her father and brothers. She claims that it was “six feet long” (113), but when she, her brothers, and Bill return to shoot it, the snake is missing. Bechdel is correct in her assertion that a serpent is a “vexingly ambiguous archetype” (115), however, in the context of “Fun Home,” the serpent is primarily a symbol for sexuality, and its presence contrasts Bechdel’s and Bechdel’s father’s sexualities in ways that invite comparison and speculation.
Bechdel states that after failing to find the snake again “a postlapsarian melancholy crept over me” (114). “Postlapsarian” specifically refers to the Fall of Man, evoking the classic tale of Adam and Eve’s mistake in the Garden of Eden. The consequences of their actions forever change humanity and introduce corruption and lust as fundamental human traits. Bechdel’s utilization of this story implies that she, just like humanity, undergoes a fundamental awakening of her identity. Uncovering the snake stirred in Bechdel feelings of lust, temptation, guilt, and disobedience, foreshadowing her eventual realization that she is a lesbian a few years later. The snake’s importance in her development is confirmed when she refers to it as an “unspoken initiation rite” (114) that she had “failed;” being unsuccessful in locating the serpent after running away signifies her feelings of disorientation and confusion concerning her sexuality and gender at a time when many young kids are beginning to enter puberty.
The serpent is also used as a metaphor to explain not only Bechdel’s father’s sexuality, but his personality and his duplicity. Bechdel mentions that the serpent is “obviously” symbolic of a “phallus,” and questions if her father “had seen a snake the size of that one?” (115) In her last question, Bechdel simultaneously recalls her own development as a young girl living in the shadow of her father, wanting to impress him, and her father’s potential homosexuality and sexual partners. In addition, the symbol of the snake invokes the story of Adam and Eve and original sin so that the concept of guilt emerges and attaches itself to her father, a trait which readers see his character develop later in the comic. When she refers to snakes’ “nonduality” (115), Bechdel refers to the one-sided image of himself that her father portrayed to his children when they were young. But she continues, “maybe that’s what’s so unsettling about snakes” (115), indicating her father’s living of a double life and his hidden history of spending time with young men, shoplifting, and drinking.
How does sexuality both alienate and unify Alison and her Father in Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic?
In Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel sexuality plays a major role in the development of Bechdel’s life, both through the development of her own homosexuality and through the development of her understanding of her father’s sexuality. The author’s relationship with her father throughout the novel is rocky and at times hostile and toxic. It isn’t until the latter half of the book that her father transforms from a mysterious, often negative force in the novel, into a more humanized character, and through this more developed knowledge of his past and his life the reader can view him in a much more sympathetic way.
I chose to look at a scene in the final few pages of the book. On pages 220 and 221, Bechdel chronicles the first and only open conversation about sexuality she had with her father, and how this experience, while uncomfortable, made her feel as though she knew her father better than she thought. Both Bechdel and her father have dealt with their sexuality throughout the novel, and it is in this scene, only a few pages before the book ends, that the topic is openly discussed between the two of them. In a questionable exchange where her father details past hookups and relationships with men, Bechdel is finally able to relate to her father on a deeper level. Their common struggle with sexuality and navigating that in the context of the 1970s and 80s unifies them in a way that they have not been unified over the course of Bechdel’s childhood. Bechdel’s father discusses how as a young boy he would “dress up in girl’s clothes”(Bechdel 221), because he wanted to be a girl. Bechdel responds by reminding her father that she used to dress up in boy’s clothes because she too felt that she could not relate fully with her femininity, in the same way he could not reconcile himself fully with masculinity. This “me too” moment is crucial to their relation, and serves as a defining moment in the author’s relationship with her father for the remainder of the novel. However, despite their discussion and relation about their sexualities, the her father dealt with his sexuality had, for her entire childhood, driven a huge wedge in the middle of their family. And is a significant part of the reason why her relationship with her father up until this point had been relatively distant. His inappropriate relationships with younger men and his constant affairs caused a rift in his marriage to Bechdel’s mother, and thus created numerous issues inside their family. This toxic environment in the home made the childhood and adolescence of Bechdel and her siblings difficult and at many times unhealthy.
So, sexuality plays an interesting role in this novel. As both a unifier and fissure in the relationship between the author and her father. By exploring this complex relationship in context of a struggle with sexuality, Bechdel is able to translate her own personal story into a larger commentary on the effects of social stigmatization of sexuality. This does not absolve her father of his inappropriate behavior towards others, but it offers an explanation that allows the reader to understand her father as more than just an old gay pervert who likes younger men.
On page 16, Alison draws herself angrily cleaning her father’s artificial, ornamented household items. She not only hates having to clean the unnecessary “scrolls, tassels, and bric-a-brac” (16) that infest her family’s home, but also hates her father, hates how he forces her to live in his artificial world with him. To young Alison, her father is the greatest representation of this terrible, ugly artifice, and she knew this to be true even before she learned he “actually had a dark secret” (16). He, and everything he did, was artificial.
Perhaps as a direct result of her father’s celebration of artifice, Alison has yearned for honesty her entire life. She cannot understand his obsession with perfection, and often feels as if she is more like an artifact in his perfect museum, a “sort of still life with children” (13), than his own daughter. She and her siblings are not free to be who they are; they must fit perfectly in their father’s constructed world. He erupts in anger when his artificial world he created is somehow broken (11), and forces Alison to live in his artificial world when he controls what she wears (15).
On the last panel on page 16, Alison’s father has his family posing for a perfect family photo in front of his pride and joy (his house), with his children clearly uncomfortable and his wife angry that they’ll be late to church. “They were lies,” (16), Alison says, on a panel of her cleaning glass ornaments of a wall-lamp. The furniture, with all their unnecessary ornaments and glamour, were all lies. He father applying bronzing stick before going to church (16), manipulating his appearance, trying to secretly be the person he wanted to be as he played the role of another, was all a lie. The picture of a happy, nuclear family before going to church, a total lie. To Alison, the family photo taken by her father in front of their house is the height of her father’s artifice. “He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they were not” (16) the caption above the family photo says. He could never truly change who he or who his family was; but he would spend his whole life trying to make things appear as how they wished he would be. Alison, one the other hand, cannot bear to live her life this way. And this, in a way, might have done her good. Alison Bechdel implies that by trying to live a life opposite to the artificiality of her father’s, she became the honest person she is. The result of her drive for the truth led her to accept her sexuality; her father, on the other hand, never could.
In many ways, the story that Alison Bechdel tell about herself and her father in Fun Home parallel one another. Bechdel’s father struggles with coming to his terms sexuality, and expressed his sexuality through the coercive manipulation of high school aged boys. The pressure and burden of this secret ultimately lead to his suicide. In a similar fashion, Bechdel also has conflicts pertaining to her sexuality, but unlike her father, she accepts and her sexual orientation in place of suppressing them. The difference in coping mechanisms between the two is where their stories divide.
Throughout this graphic novel, Bechdel’s tone lacks emotion, which may reflect her numbness towards her father’s death, but still she manages to pack meaning through her simple yet powerful textboxts. In a contemplative moment, Bechdel comments, “The end of [her father’s] life coincided with the beginning of her truth” (117). That is to say, when her father past, he no longer had to personally deal with his insecurities regarding his sexuality, identity, or sense of place in the world, and Bechdel could begin down her path of self-love and expression. The contrast between Bechdel and her father’s way of coping is fascinating; they are polar opposites. When Bechdel’s dad first “experimented” he repressed his sexuality, Bechdel thrived by accepting it, and at the end of the day their fates led them down very different paths.
Following this realization, Bechdel flashes back to the first time she ever saw a “women who wore men’s clothes and had men’s haircuts” (118). Even though at her young age she did not know that this woman was lesbian, Bechdel still “recognized her with a surge of joy” (118). Bechdel responds “with a surge of joy” because, for the first time, she sees someone who is like her. Though Bechdel seems ecstatic with this new revelation, her father’s negative opinion is portrayed through his snide question: “‘Is that what you want to look like?” (118). This seems like a rather counterintuitive response from a parent who is secretly a queer individual, but it demonstrates his self-resentment because he does not want his daughter “to look like” a “truck-driving bulldyke” in fair that she will loathe herself and he does. In response to her father’s question she gives a simple, “No”, and comments in to the reader, “What else could I say?” (119). This comment reinforces the patriarchal way in which her father governs their family. He uses an authoritative approach to parenting, and Bechdel responds “No” in fear of the truth leading to punishment. Bechdel’s true emotions regarding her father’s questions are better understood through the images. In the image where Bechdel responds to her father “No” her eyes are glued onto the lesbian women, fascinated by who she could potentially become in the future. In the following box, as her and her father leave lunch, she looks back at the entrance as though she longs one more chance to see this magnificent woman. This longing look could also demonstrate a young Bechdel’s fear that her father would never allow her to be like the individual in the deli. This fear coincides with one of the many borders in this novel, which is the the ability to love yourself and accept yourself for who you are.
Augie Schultz
Prof. Cassarino
Fun Home Analysis
3/5/19
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is a graphic autobiography about herself and the multidimensional and multifaceted relationships between herself and her budding sexuality, herself and her comically demented parents, her father, Bruce, especially, and the cross-section of these two paramount facets of her life as Alison matures into young adulthood. In this cross-section lies the relationship between Bruce’s closeted homosexuality and the unexpected, and almost unwanted solace during Alison’s transition into young adulthood. Bruce, though plagued with numerous emotional, psychological, and ethical disturbances, was able to anticipate his daughter’s homosexuality and, whether consciously or not, act as a functional father, supporting his daughter during a period of distress and confusion.
Fun Home is unequivocally not the tale of a troubled father coming to his daughter’s side when she needs him the most. Bruce is a deranged man, stunted in too many ways to count who consistently mistreats and hurts his family and those around him. However, on pages 204 and 205, it becomes clear that, at the very least, Bruce suspects the realization Alison is coming to and attempts to comfort her, making the bond cultivated in the previous seven pages and throughout the conclusion of the book the all the more meaningful. In this scene, Bruce not only subtly acknowledges his daughter’s lesbianism, but demonstrates his acceptance and willingness to play a supporting role during her difficult transitional period. He gives her Earthly Paradise, an autobiography by Colette Dawn, specifically telling her to “learn about Paris in the early twenties, that whole scene” (205). The scene alludes to lonely lesbian women who felt safe and comforted by the presence of others like them. Bechdel writes that she “hadn’t mentioned my big lesbian epiphany yet” (205), acknowledging the fact that this coincidence “was interesting, to say the least” (205).” On the previous page, when Alison asks her father what she should read over her weekend home from college, the image depicts Bruce caressing his chin with a text bubble that says “elated,” (204) pointing to him. This is further evidence that, on some level, Bruce was conscious of and excited to help his daughter accept something that he himself brutally failed at.
The significance of this scene is predicated by the first sixteen pages of the chapter–in which, as a result of her father, Alison is first introduced to the homosexual culture of New York’s City’s West Village–and the concluding section of the book, in which Alison acknowledges the uncharacteristic supporting role her father accepted. It’s easy for Bechdel to remember how awful of a father Bruce was, but when pensively reflecting on her father’s last few months in chapter seven, she comes to the conclusion that he wasn’t entirely evil. After considering scenes like the one depicted on pages 204-205, she acknowledges how he supported her in an emotionally tumultuous time, and thanks him in the last scene by writing “he was there to catch me when I lept” (232).
Madison Middleton
March 4, 2019
Fun Home Responses
Throughout the graphic novel, “Fun Home,” author and illustrator Alison Bechdel invites readers to share in several odd behaviours she exhibited as a child, usually in response to something askew in her family’s dynamic. These actions manifest as either an attempt to fulfill an absence or a rebuttal to an aversion of her wants and needs. In chapter five, Bechdel reveals that she was obsessive-compulsive during her pre-adolescent years. She avoided odd numbers, had difficulty transgressing a room’s threshold, and kept an intensive diary. She introduces her diary for the first time on page 140. Her entries begin as tremendously straightforward, factual, and brief. Some are even dull; One dated Friday, March 26 simply states, “It was pretty warm out. I got out a Hardy Boy Book. Christian threw sand in John’s face. He started to cry. I took him in.”
However, only a month later, young Alison begins to include a mysterious, “minutely-lettered phrase I think” between each seemingly factual statement. Bechdel claims this arose from a place of existential insecurity. On page 141, Bechdel explains, “How did I know that the things I was writing were absolutely, objectively true?” She even implies that her use of mundane phrases and words could easily be lies. Soon, she blots out the “I think”s in an attempt to control her compulsion. But this leads to another tick. The “I think” transforms into a small sweeping arch or, as Bechdel describes, “a curvy circumflex.” This new symbol is first placed between sentences. Then, she scribbles it over words like “mother,” “I,” “dad,” and “we.” This image reinforces the unstable family life ruminating in her unconsciousness. Not long after, she etches the symbol over entire diary entries as if to call everything into question.
One entry is spared from this all-encompassing treatment. Dated Saturday, August 14, Alison and her brothers witness a gigantic rat snake drink from a spring on a family outing (a trip that does not include the presence of her mother but of the young man working for her father). The diary entry reads only, “We saw a snake. We had lunch.” Her arch strikes through both “we”s, but does not touch the snake. Bechdel here implies that the snake, beyond anything else, is undoubtedly real and essential. Bechdel immediately questions its archetypal significance. On page 116, she says, “It’s obviously a phallus, yet a more ancient and universal symbol of the feminine principle would be hard to come by.” The mere presence of the snake feels like a blunt, almost perverse reminder of her father’s closeted homosexuality. It is also critical that the snake appear on a trip where her father and his worker likely slept together. Yet Bechdel interrupts this thought, bestowing femininity onto the snake as well. Many cultures consider the snake as a symbol of rebirth, the shedding of old skin. It is the creature that led Eve to the Tree of Knowledge and instructed her to feast upon its fruits. When Alison spared the word “snake” from her characteristic slash, she unknowingly acknowledged the creature’s implication. It represents not only the duality of Alison and her father’s relationship as two sides of the same coin, both gay and striving for femininity and masculinity in their own ways. But the snake also signifies their transformation, healing, and rebirth. As Bechdel puts it, “They also imply cyclicality, life from death, creation from destruction. And in a way, you could say that my father’s end was my beginning. Or more precisely, that the end of his lie coincided with the beginning of my truth.” Her father was killed by an oncoming truck — possibly a suicide, but also quite possibly, and as the trucker claimed, a leap into the road in order to avoid a snake — just as Alison began to uncover and explore her own sexuality. Had her father not perished would Alison have found her “truth” in the same way? Was he the final obstacle she had to overcome?
The serpentine “ouroboros” symbolizes the constant renewal of life, infinity, and immortality. Its image originated in Egypt but soon found thresholds in other cultures, notably the Norse. The emblem of a serpent or dragon ringing around itself with tail in mouth, a continual, endless loop, is found in many Norse legends and artifacts. On page 116, it also appears in the hands of Bruce Bechdel as a book cover for “The Worm Ouroboros” by Eric Rücker Eddison. Alison Bechdel might have witnessed her father reading that book on that day, but most likely the artist placed it there to hone in on her discovery; In a way, she is the reincarnation of her father, and thus he becomes immortal.
Isabella Cady
4 March 2019
How is the absence of color defining of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home?
The significance of Bruce Bechdel’s speechlessness in the face of color stands to represent his relationship with his sexuality. Sexuality outside of heterosexuality is made colorful and fruitful by the discourse surrounding it, the flag representing it, and the people encompassing it. By rejecting the actual visual of color in her autobiography, Bechdel exposes the neglect of identity within her father and even within herself up until her sexual awakening. Yet, Bechdel’s literary description of color in an otherwise colorless book is a testament to underlying artistry of her father in his use of words to express the otherwise unexpressed. She takes to painting color through the skill that he father gave her, imagery through text.
Bechdel writes, “But the infinite gradations of color in a fine sunset–from salmon to canary to midnight blue–left him wordless (150).” Bechdel strips Bruce of his intellectual prowess, making him naked except for his identity. Yet, despite the vulnerable representation of her father the book still remains as colorless as Bruce’s sexuality remains unspoken. The description of the sunset is still there, yet not fully encompassed by the lack of its actual representation. Readers are left to imagine or theorize that there is actually a sunset casting a shadow on Alison and her father, just as the people in Bruce’s life and Alison’s upbringing could never fully see or experience the truth and fullness of Bruce’s sexuality.
By comparing sexuality to an outpour of color, Alison also suggests the beauty of both her and her father’s sexuality. Her representation of sexual identity in this particular scene encompasses her relationship to her sexuality that line the narrative of the rest of the book. Alison doesn’t hide from the grandeur of her identity, but her father does. Just like the colors of the sun disappear behind the cloak of the horizon, Bruce’s sexuality falls behind the disguise of his heteronormative lifestyle. And, despite the fact that both Alison and Bruce experience the sunset in this particular scene, it is Alison’s words that live on and her relationship with her sexuality that adopts the fullness of color that she describes. Where Bruce was rendered speechless, Alison was given a voice through her identity.
The actual image of attached to the text also stands as an important symbol of Alison’s relationship with her father and the text as a hole. The image showcases two silhouettes, Alison and Bruce, leaning on an intricate iron gate. The young Alison has one arm bracing her weight as her figure leans towards her father’s whose frame leans against the intricacy of the gate just out of reach of Alison’s younger self. The absence of color aside, the image marks both separation and threshold or right of passage. While Alison’s silhouette is stretching towards her father’s, wanting to lean into his comfort and share that moment, she is also standing at a gate marking a dropoff into the sea of sinking color. In this sense, Alison is standing with both a misunderstood identity and the space between her and her father.
Cecilia Needham
March 3, 2019
Response to Fun Home – The Translation
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is the exploration of Bechdel’s identity as it relates to her father. Their troubled relationship was rooted in their intense similarity, as Bechdel says they “were inversions of one another.” (98) She continues, “While I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him… / …He was attempting to express something feminine through me” (98). Their personalities were aggressively copies of one another, which strained their relationship because as they were both prone to introspection and self-loathing, they became physical, human manifestations of what they hated most about themselves. Or rather, what of their personality troubled them most. They both coped with intense sexual shame as a result of their bi or homosexual orientations, gender expression nonconformity, a “life considered expendable” (196), and other difficult sentiments such as depression, injustice, and fear. Because of this magnificent similarity, it is unclear how Bechdel will be able to separate herself from her father’s misfortune and its impact on her. Is she doomed for the same sad life and unknown death as her father?
An optimistic answer to this question lies in a striking scene from Chapter 4 of “Fun Home”, when Bechdel is looking through her father’s box of photos labelled “Family” and finds several photos of her father from his youth. In this moment, her father’s misery that Bechdel may find herself destined for as a result of their incredibly homogenous personalities is reversed. Their similarities are painted, or rather drawn, positively and it seems as though Bechdel understands her “translation” (120) and is able to live the life he was not: a life in which her gender expression nonconformity and sexual orientation do not infringe on her happiness, and thus do not inflict mental and emotional self-harm.
In one of the photos, Bechdel’s father is forcing a smile in a social setting, sunbathing on the roof of his frat house. She wonders, “Was the boy who took it his lover?” (120) Then referring to the photo of herself in a similar setting, she writes, “As the girl who took this polaroid of me on a fire escape on my twenty-first birthday was mine?” (120) This parallel stands out because it is one of the few instances in which their relationship and similarities to one another is written about with a positive tone. Bechdel compares the similar photos and context in regards to their sexualities as something pleasant. Furthermore, she writes “The exterior setting, the pained grin, the flexible wrists, even the angle of shadows falling across our faces — it’s about as close as a translation can get.” (120) The comparison of their pained grins shows Bechdel talking about their struggles with depression and other mental struggles in a positive light, as opposed to how she usually writes about her father taking out his anxieties on her and the rest of the family in emotionally and sometimes physically abusive ways.
The way these photos are drawn in Fun House illustrate this positive translation. They look much happier and similar to one another than they could ever be if they were pictured together. Their facial expressions show are akin and show a familial parallel, down to the “flexible wrists”. The main difference that can be observed through interpretation of the illustration of these similar side-by-side photos is the more recent one seems more hopeful. Although both facial expressions are described as “pained grins”, Bechdel’s smile seems more genuine. Perhaps it’s simply because of the fact it is a a near-present day photo taken of a girl in a city with the rest of her life ahead of her versus a 50+ year old photo of a man doomed for a life trapped in a heterosexual marriage in a traditional town. In this comparison, the remarkable positive observation similarities between Bechdel and her father as well as the astonishing differences in fate, the complex relationship is seen in a positive light. Furthermore, it seems as though Bechdel has come to terms with fact that yes, she is a translation of her father, but she will not be subject to the same miserable life as him.