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Academic journal essay about fun home by alison bechdel
Academic journal essay about fun home by alison bechdel
Essay on fun home by alison bechdel
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Looking back at the past and to see how portraying it at a later time can change someone’s perspective. Looking back at all the events that had happened Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home, is where she expresses how her family had gone separately one by one and how it has made an effect on herself to become who she is now.
In the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel is literally about the past young version of herself and how she had a father who was in the closet even though the people had most likely figured it out since the town is very small and isolated from the larger areas. With the death of her father, things were difficult for her because the town didn’t say how or as to why he actually died. “ The lord moves in mysterious ways.
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The lost that had isolated the family into their own space in their own worlds. Dealing with the current event, also, with the fact that she was young at the time, she would want to have attention from her mother and would want to connect with her mom. Yet her mom didn’t want to because her mom would want to be in her world where she would act in the way where she would want her life to have turned out to be. “ I have a right to live off you because I married you, and because I used to let you get on top of me and bump your uglies” (331). Bechdel’s showing what her mother wanted to be when she was younger. Her mother would want to be in her own imagination, acting in the life that she would’ve much more desired. The way that she had been pushed to the side by her mother she had seen how things around the house, within the family. Therefore, she had also isolated herself and seeing how her mom melted into the interest of a variety of arts. As well as the rest of the family was into it, she decided to be focused in. “But it was all that sustained them and was thus all-consuming. From their example, I learned quickly to feed myself” (333). With everyone in the household doing their own thing Bechdel at her younger stage had also decided to follow in the families footstep and develop the feeling of being artistic. “Our home was like an artists’ colony, we ate together, but otherwise were absorbed in our separate
No matter how bad the situations seem they all happen for a reason. Sharon Olds had to realize this through her own pain and suffering. She portrays herself as the speaker who goes back to May of 1937, and sees her parents. In “I Go Back to May 1937” she tells a story of when her parents were still just dating. They were just about to graduate and get married. Instead of feeling joyful or smiling at the sight of them she had a completely different reaction. She wanted to go up to them and stop them. Maybe they looked innocent then, but she knew that they would not remain that way for long. By telling the story of her parent’s ignorance, betrayal, and the difficult decisions that soon follow, Sharon Olds shows that the will to live helps people make life’s difficult decisions, in “I Go Back to May 1937.”
This extract emphasises the lonely, outworld feeling that would have been felt living in such settings. This puts into perspective the feeling that will be felt during the coarse of the plot development.
Bechdel decides to live her reality and be her true self. After she reveals this information to her parents, her mother reveals the truth about her father. Bechdel’s father had affairs with many other men throughout his lifetime. Bechdel is shocked and does not understand how her father was able to do that for so long. When Bechdel realizes this, she instantly feels as if now she may be able to connect with her father. Her father was living behind the appearance of the perfect husband and man to hide his actual sexuality of being gay. She feels as if they can connect through their changing sexuality, even though she has decided to come out while her father has
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
The memoir “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” by Alison Bechdel reminds me more of a fictional rather than “real” graphic memoir. Bruce, Alison’s dad seems like he is escaping from the world rather than in the reality due to his hidden identity, being homosexual. During Bruce’s time period, homosexuality was not acceptable. By secluding himself to the outside world, including his family was his only escape. Moreover, Alison chooses to combine the world around her with the world that she thinks that she is in. The relationship between Alison and Bruce is somewhat distant. Yet, they seem to be closer when they are discussing about literature books. Hence, this memoir is connected with literatures in every significant event that took place in this
In chapter one, “Old Father, Old Artificer”, of her graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, the young Bechdel generated her identity through the tensions and mysteries that engulfed her family the home. Masculinity, physical strength and a modern outlook were her personality traits as she grew, becoming the “Butch to [her father’s] Nelly” (269) and his opposite in several aspects. A conscious effort was made on her part to set her own pace from what her father expected of her. He was a strong, influential figure within her life. Expressing emotions towards her father was strictly not allowed in the home. Bechdel was left “rushing from the room in embarrassment” (273) on the one unforgettable occasion that she went to kiss him goodnight. She...
In the graphic novel Fun Home, by Allison Bechdel, sexual self-discovery plays a critical role in the development of the main character, Allison Bechdel herself; furthermore, Bechdel depicts the plethora of factors that are pivotal in the shaping of who she is before, during and after her sexual self-development. Bechdel’s anguish and pain begins with all of her accounts that she encountered at home, with her respective family member – most importantly her father – at school, and the community she grew up within. Bechdel’s arduous process of her queer sexual self-development is throughout the novel as complex as her subjectivity itself. Main points highlight the difficulties behind which are all mostly focused on the dynamics between her and her father. Throughout the novel, she spotlights many accounts where she felt lost and ashamed of her coming out and having the proper courage to express this to her parents. Many events and factors contributed to this development that many seem to fear.
Who is Alison Bechdel? Is she the author? Is she the main character? The answer is yes, Alison Bechdel is both author and main character in her own graphic novel Fun Home. “Fun Home was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, and in a great moment for graphic narrative, was named Best Book of 2006 by Time Magazine. Time called the tightly architected investigation into her closeted bisexual father’s suicide ‘a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other’” (Dykes to watch out for). In her ground-breaking graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bechdel reencounters the times of her childhood with her father and the time after his death.
Every family has secrets. Taboo secrets are typically the one's we'd like to keep hidden the most. Unfortunately, what's done in the dark always finds itself resurfacing to the light. In Allison Bechdel "Fun Home", she recollects the memories that impacted her life the most when she was in the stage of discovering her true self. The memories we remember the most tend to play a major role in our life development. For Allison, one well-kept secret that her father contained well from her, unraveled many memories of the truth that laid before her eyes.
The poem “I Go Back to May 1937” written in 1987 by poet and writer Sharon Olds, is based on a child’s perspective on her parent’s marriage that is destined to fail and the child’s wishes to go back and stop them from making the mistake of marriage. The poem is told from the perspective of the couple’s future child, who ultimately goes back in time to try and convince them that their marriage would be a mistake. Although this creates conflict, as by preventing the couple from marriage would ultimately lead to the end of her own existence. Olds uses imagery, conflict and symbolism to show the differences between the couple and their child’s emotions and feelings about their ill-fated marriage.
While facing certain struggles as both Alison and her father try to embrace their sexuality, Alison is able to “come out” to her family at the age of 19 unlike her father who’s homosexuality remains a secret for most of Alison’s life. When Alison tells her mother that she is gay she is able to do so with a sense of a mostly a supportive community. Therefore, it is Alison’s own “coming out” that provokes her mother to reveal her father’s hidden
The next few months would be filled with tears and heartache. They went out to Los Angeles, where her grandparents lived for the funeral. Her grandmother had been cremated before they reached Los Angeles, which created a mental gap for them. They not only had to deal with the loss of her, but weren’t able to have closure of seeing her body. After the funeral, Evelyn’s grandfather called everyday to talk. She thought it was because he was lonely, but realized that was not the case at all. He started getting distraught and having discussions with her that weren’t on topic. About two weeks later, her grandfather began violently cursing at her, called her vulgar names and kept saying “why would you do this, why?”. They found out the reason he had been calling a great amount is because Evelyn sounded exactly like her grandmother. Her grandfather’s stimuli of blaming her for actions that were not hers, created her to sink into a deep depression. For Evelyn, it was devastating. Not only did her beloved grandmother kill herself, she was now being blamed for her death in a twisted way. The accusations of her grandfather slowly started taking a toll on Evelyn’s
In Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel entitled Fun Home, the author expresses her life in a comical manner where she explains the relationship between her and her family, pointedly her father who acts as a father figure to the family as she undergoes her exhaustive search for sexuality. Furthermore, the story describes the relationship between a daughter and a father with inversed gender roles as sexuality is questioned. Throughout the novel, the author suggests that one’s identity is impacted by their environment because one’s true self is created through the ability of a person to distinguish reality from fictional despotism.
All wise people will tell us that we must never let the sadness of our past and the fear of our future ruin the happiness of our present. However, what happens when this idea becomes an illusion restraining us from actually living in the present? What happens when the only condition to our happiness is that our present returns in the past? The book A long way home, written by Saroo Brierley and its film adaptation, Lion, directed by Garth Davis illustrates the fight of a young man who tries to appreciate his present by reconnecting with his past. Indeed, both literary and visual works present Saroo’s incredible, once thought impossible quest to find his biological family in the indian village he left 25 years ago. Through both narratives, it
In the short story “ A Dead Woman’s Secret by Guy de Maupassant, the basic theme is devoted to family and private relationships. The main characters in the story are Marguerite (the daughter), the judge (the son), the priest, and the deceased mother. Marguerite is a nun and she is very religious. The dead woman’s son, the Judge, handled the law as a weapon with which he smote the weak ones without pity. The story begins by telling the reader that the woman had died quietly, without pain. The author is very descriptive when explaining the woman’s appearance - “Now she was resting in her bed, lying on her back, her eyes closed, her features calm, her long white hair carefully arranged as though she had done it up ten minutes before dying. The whole pale countenance of the dead woman was so collected, so calm, so resigned that one could feel what a sweet soul had lived in that body, what a quiet existence this old soul had led, how easy and pure the death of this parent had been” (1). The children had been kneeling by their mother’s bed for awhile just admiring her. The priest had stopped by to help the children pass by the next hours of great sadness, but the children decided that they wanted to be alone as they spend the last few hours with their mother. Within in the story, the author discusses the relationship between the children’s father and their mother. The father was said to make the mother most unhappy. Great