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Alison Bechdel’s memoir Fun Home is a masterfully crafted piece. In comparison to the other memoirs we have read for this course, Fun Home is definitely, for me, the most intriguing and immersive of the three. Bechdel manages to develop an engaging and thought-provoking piece about trying to understand the people that we are close to and discovering who we, as individuals, are in relation to them. Fun Home is a story that is very specific to Bechdel’s life, but there is a universality to it since we have all been in families and we have all been mysteries to one another. Figuring out those mysteries and finding a way through life via those relationships is the true purpose of this narrative. Bechdel accomplishes this well crafted memoir with …show more content…
To discover herself in relation to her father, Bechdel uses both visual and literary techniques. To visually depict the parallels of herself and her father Bechdel draws cells in which she and her father are engaged in related activities, but are separated. One such example is that of the bottom cell on page 86 in which young Bechdel and her father are both engaging in literary pursuits; her writing a check so as to buy some comic books with which to satisfy her ravenous literary hunger and her father reading a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald. In the scenario they are physically separated by the vast space between where they are sitting in the study. Bechdel also draws this cell from the perspective of being outside the house looking in through two windows which illustrates them being visually separated by the wall between the two windows with which we view her and her father. This scene illustrates the complex nature of Bechdel’s relationship with her father, as they are both very similar but ultimately separated by a gap which they cannot seem to …show more content…
On page 99 Bechdel shows her and her father’s similar interest in masculine beauty through her captions, “Between us lay a slender demilitarized zone—our shared reverence for masculine beauty,” and “But I wanted the muscles and tweed like my father wanted the velvet and pearls—subjectively, for myself” (pg. 99). Through these captions Bechdel once again illustrates a parallel between her and her father, as they both enjoy masculine beauty. However, they are once again separated by a divide created by the fact that they don’t enjoy it in the same fashion. While her father enjoys masculine beauty in other men, Bechdel wants to enjoy masculine beauty by embracing it as part of who she is. These two quotes also serve to allude to the parallel of both Bechdel and her father’s homosexuality while also implying the difference between how they go about dealing with it. While Bechdel wants to embrace her homosexuality and express herself accordingly, her father strives to impose his feelings of femininity on her instead of acting on them himself. While her father projects onto others, Bechdel acts upon her feelings illustrating once again that both she and her father are similar beings, however they are also separated by a gap created by them not acting in the same
conduct themselves distinctly. Evil and wicked people tends to hurt and harm others with no
Throughout this essay he focuses on keeping the tone light and humorous so as to entertain and yet still educate. We see him casually admitting his and others shortcomings as men and directing the humor at himself as he makes fun of his horrible behavior. In doing so, he makes this piece very easy for the reader to relate to; whether you are a woman
In the memoir, Fun Home, Alison Bechdel effectively depicted her life as a child all the way up to age nineteen when she finally decided to come out to her family. Growing up Alison’s path crossed paths with struggles that try to hinder her while she attempts to grasp on to the identity of being homosexual. Even though Bechdel encounter struggles she is able to overcome those struggles in a supportive environment. Despite her father, Bruce Bechdel homosexuality, which was unknown to Alison for the majority of her life could possibly be the emotional core of Fun Home. In actuality, it is Alison 's personal coming out party that assists her mother, Helen Bechdel, to expose Bruce 's hidden relationships to Alison. Effectively, the process of writing the memoir has really permitted Bechdel to reminisce about her father through the spectacles of her experiences, later giving her the chance to reveal clues about her father 's undercover desires that she was incapable of interpreting at the moment. In a scene where Bruce takes his openly queer daughter to a gay bar embodies the dissimilarities amongst Bruce and Alison 's attitudes of dealing with their homosexuality. Bruce tussles with the shame of hiding his
Francis Macomber is a middle age man that is good at court games such as: tennis or squash, competitions where there are set standards and rules for play. Also, there are confined areas of play for his games. He is quite wealthy and some say handsome which add to Francis masculinity. His wife on the other hand does not think that much of him and thinks of him as a coward. Margot on the other hand his “beautiful wife”, whom really does not like Francis but stays with him anyway. She cheats on him and despises, basically because he married her only for her looks. Margot on the other hand is part responsible for the same thing because she only married him for his money. They are both stuck in a situation because they both married for the wrong reasons. Their gender roles are sort of fighting against each other because she doesn’t care about the relationship and cheats; and he tries to prove that he is a man and yet fails because he tries too hard. Masculinity is something that Margot and others at the Safari think it is an aspect of manhood that Francis lacks.
Throughout chapter one of Fun Home, Alison Bechdel portrays artifice and art as two very similar but distinct things; both overlapping and making it hard to differentiate between what is what. Art, in her view, is the truth, and a skill that has to be mastered. On the other hand, artifice contains partial, or full, amounts of falsehood; it covers up the truth in some way but contains art in itself. Artifice can be, like art, something mastered, but can also be a coping mechanism to cover up something good or bad. Bechdel turns both art and artifice into a very interlinked, combined, version of the two forms. When truth and falsehood are combined, after awhile, it becomes a challenge to distinguish between the two; evidently true to herself.
Fun Home shows how as the reader we can become educated and heal from the stories like that of Alison Bechdel’s childhood. We also can see Alison’s journey of healing as well. This full circle journey is why literature is so versatile and important to our society and culture. We depend on the creation and growth of literary themes like the ones we see in Fun House to help us grow and deal with the real world.
In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Bechdel uses the theme of appearance versus reality to highlight her relationship with her father. Bechdel utilizes her illustrations and short sentences to reveal these things about herself and her father. Bechdel opens her memoir with a chapter entitled “Old Father, Old Artificer”. Bechdel refers to her father, Bruce Bechdel, as an artificer because she sees him as a skilled craftsman. Bechdel describes, “His greatest achievement, arguably, was his monomaniacal restoration of our old house.” (Bechdel 4). Her father restored their old house to make it look like a huge mansion. Bechdel knows that this is just the appearance of their household because it is not an accurate representation of their family life inside the house. Bruce created an appearance that was the opposite of reality to cover up the actual wealth of their family. He hides the fact that his family may not be as wealthy and perfect as they appear to be. In this case, Bruce reveals he believes that appearance is more important than the reality of a situation. Appearance is also important on the inside of the home as well. Bechdel mentions, “Sometimes, when things were going well, I
A breathtaking saga of a young girl’s tragic memories of her childhood. As with Ellen, Gibbons’ parents both died before she was twelve-years-old, forming the family. basis of the plot and themes of this novel. The fond memories she possessed of her mother and the harsh ones of her father are reflected in the thoughts and actions of Ellen. The simplistic and humble attitude that both Gibbons and Ellen epitomizes in the novel is portrayed through diction and dialogue.
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.
Finally, even though, for a long time, the roles of woman in a relationship have been established to be what I already explained, we see that these two protagonists broke that conception and established new ways of behaving in them. One did it by having an affair with another man and expressing freely her sexuality and the other by breaking free from the prison her marriage represented and discovering her true self. The idea that unites the both is that, in their own way, they defied many beliefs and started a new way of thinking and a new perception of life, love and relationships.
In Fun Home: A Family Tragic Comic, Alison Bechdel uses the graphic novel technique of bringing visuals and concise text to her audience to reveal the relationship with her father in a perspective that can not be modified through the readers perspective and interpretation. Bechdel employs this type of writing style to help visualize a better interpretation of how she describes the differences in both her and her fathers’ gender roles throughout the novel. This tactic helps discuss and show how these gender roles were depicted as opposite from one another. But, in this case being opposite from one another made them gain a stronger relationship of understanding and reviling that these differences were actually similarities they also shared.
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.
...appearance with a sense of revulsion and harshness, which shows the differing nature in which males are able to evade serious repercussions as well as responsibility whereas females are left for judgment. In this way, the text appears to lower the significance and value of having knowledge and being informed while simultaneously highlighting the deceptive and complex nature that lies within each individual.
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.