Close Reading Of Alison Bechtel's Fun Home

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Close Reading of Fun Home Fun Home by Alison Bechdel shows us her discovery of her own and her father's homosexuality. This graphic memoir touches on things like homosexuality, family relationships, and suicide. What’s unique about this autobiographical story is that Bechtel used the graphic novel medium to tell her story. When we close read pages fourteen through seventeen in Fun Home we can understand how a Bechdel employs words and graphic devices to allow for specific events. One can also see how the specific content of the pages connects to the book entirely. This part of the graphic novel shows the relationship between Bruce Bechdel and his family and his attempts to cover his homosexuality by making an image of an ideal family, these …show more content…

The other family members obviously don't share the same taste for decoration as Bruce Bechdel. The decoration of the home is part of the front that Bruce Bechdel is trying to make. He wants his house to appear perfect and he would rather spend time making it nice than spending time with his family. As I said earlier, the father was placed in a room, separated from the kids in panel two on fourteen. This may suggest that the father is separated from his kids and that Bruce Bechdel would rather spend time working on and cleaning his house stuff rather then with his kids. Alison says “My brothers and I couldn't compete with the astral lamps and girandoles ...”(Bechdel 14). We are told that the fathers priorities are not ordered right. The last panel on page fourteen shows the same concept as the last panel on page fifteen: the fathers care for aesthetic beauty over Alison's carelessness of the aesthetics of the home. Page fourteen's last panel and the four panels on page fifteen show the opposition between Alison and her father. Their interests do not agree and this could be an reason for their stressed relationship. Page fourteen and fifteen allow for insights into the relationship between the family and father and to more extents, the relationship between Alison and Bruce. Pages sixteen and seventeen will go deeper into Bruce Bechdel attempts to show case himself and his family as a ideal

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