Picking up the book Fun Home, one would imagine that the novel would embellish some sort of comical life story of a misunderstood teenager. Although the short comic-book structured novel does have its sarcastic humor, Alison Bechdel explains her firsthand account of growing up with the difficulty of living of finding her true identity. Alison was a teenager in college when she discovered that she was a lesbian, however, the shock came when she also discovered her father was homosexual. I feel that the most influencing panel in Fun Home is where Alison and her father are in the car alone together. Not only does this panel explain the entirety of the novel in a few short speech bubbles, but it is the defining scene that connects both Alison and her father together for the first time (221). This explains the absences of Alison’s father in her life, and the scary realization that both characters are more alike than different. The car scene must be broken into spectrums to fully analyze what is happening. The only way to understand the Alison’s feelings to observe the illustrations and expressions she uses.
The only way to understand the meaning of Alison’s words is to understand the appearance and structure of the panel. The structure of this panel spans the entire page, which is just one of two other panels throughout the book to have its own full page. The smaller individual panels themselves show no outside light, only the glimpse of what we expect to be cars passing. This gives the illusion that Alison and her father are stopped in time, where they are alone in solitary confinement. This is almost a prison affect where the individuals are forced to talk with each other, even though they both are un-easy on the situation (221). A...
... middle of paper ...
... and her father lived a difficult life with their identity. Let us understand where Alison is coming from; here is a woman who has lost the only person that can fully understand what she has lived through. Perhaps this why this scene is set apart, because it resembles the connection that they will share for only a short brief moment. The book itself might be written for her father, who did not get the chance to fully find himself. Whatever the case may be, the scene in the car entitles the themes that jam our brains and make us think. The isolation car scene shows us that even though Alison did not know her father until he sadly died a few weeks later, we can see the parental bond they both share. Both characters needed each other the whole time; it was just ironic that Alison finally got through to her father in the final weeks of his life.
Works Cited
Fun Home
Inside of the journal entry she has four subgroups “after Lincoln’s game, in my room, one night later, and the desert” (235). She keeps these subgroups because that is where the plot line is for her journal entries. This is where we get the main items that tell us that there is something wrong with Lincoln when she answers for him when people say good game. Due to his autism so he cannot answer for himself or chooses not to. In her room it gives us a sense of her relationship with her mother and brother. She is very good with her brother talking with him through the wall. The very peak or climax of the story is the problem that their father has with Lincoln. It is in one night later that Drew Blake doesn’t understand his son when he says “‘stop!’ Dad shouts.’ Stop. Please. Forget I asked.’” (279). Alison makes this important by making it on its own slide. She is highlighting the issue of what her father says by leaving it on the page by itself. The falling action in the story is Alison taking a walk in the desert with her father. But also giving him the tools to help with his son. The last three slides are the graphing that he did to help his son or so we are left to assume. By Alison talking about pauses in rock songs to that of her family, requires us readers to also pause in order to make sense of her PowerPoint. Just like the pauses in rock songs life takes pauses to change the course someone is
Your identity is shaped by your desire to be who you want to be. You choose who you surround yourself with. You decide who you want to become, but in the novel the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Jing-mei’s mother already had her identity planned out whether she likes it or not. According to her mother, “you could be anything you wanted to be in America.” Her standards for her daughter were nothing short of the American dream. She wanted her daughter to be a prodigy, to excel in anything, and at first Jing-mei was just as excited as her mother was. She wasn't sure where her daughter's talents rooted, but she was sure that she reeked of potential. Mrs. Woo tried to push her daughter to become an actress, but she soon found out that will get her nowhere. Then
Bernard Cooper is the author of a short essay titled “Burl’s”, an autobiography story of himself when he was about 8 years old, starting to learn all the differences and fine lines in the world. The essay starts out as Bernard seeing everything as it’s portrayed to be and not what is actually there. Cooper describes everything he sees from the restaurant’s name “Burl’s” highlighted above the roof and chrome appliances inside to the waitresses brown uniforms. Bernard Cooper conveys hidden identity within everything through his use of description, imagery and symbolism. The main symbol he uses is the restaurant “Burl’s” itself. Another theme I found relevant was how this essay depicts society’s resistance to the unexplainable.
The Survivor by Marilyn Chin is about she is trying to find her identity. Her mother is teaching her how to be just like her culture. Struggling to find a voice and survivors to be who she unquestionably is.
In the book, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, Everett Ruess was a man who wanted to find his purpose in life by, leaving school, developing a new identity, and expressing himself and his joun in his letters. First, Ruess attended the Otis Art School and Hollywood High. “At the end of the summer, Everett returned home only long enough to earn a high school diploma, which he received in January 1931. Less than a month later he was on the road again..." Ruess started to travel solo at the age of sixteen. He began to hitchhike and trek throughout the U.S. and its national parks. “Except for a short, unhappy stint at UCLA (he dropped out after a single semester, to his father’s lasting dismay),” Ruess dropped out of college and he spent the rest
The literary devices in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home are used in a high degree. The plot of fun home is about a young girl named Alison Bechdel and her complicated relationship with her father. The protagonist is Alison and the antagonist, much like the conflict,
In the novel, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, a youthful girl by the name of Esperanza Cordero is on the journey called life. Throughout the beginning years of her life, Esperanza faces many struggles and must conquer many obstacles. Esperanza’s most substantial and arduous impediment is one that a majority of adolescents face, as she tries to unravel the different aspects of herself and try to piece them together. The search for identity is a recurring theme in multiple books, but Cisneros thoroughly explains the hardships a person faces while on the quest for who they truly are.
He uses the limited omniscient to give am intimacy in what Mary’s thinking and also the restriction of not knowing the other character’s actions until they are revealed at the end of the story but he balances this with providing context to her thoughts with the dramatic point of view. Usually, a person’s thoughts don’t need to provide ourselves with context for our own experiences, so Berry uses dramatic point of view to provide what would be missing from exclusively Mary’s thoughts. Berry uses the point of view illuminate Mary’s experience with belonging and the differences between the community of her birth and her new community. Her family had rejected her, “her parents told her. She no longer belonged to that family. To them it would be as if she had never lived” (67). That is enough to damage anyone’s sense of belonging and even though her new community welcomes, includes, teaches, and loves her like the family she lost, perhaps in her sickness a deeply buried insecurity of not belonging rears its head. Because her family didn’t accept her, Mary worries that her new community won’t accept her when she is at her worst, sick and insecure. But when she wakes she realizes that Elton had noticed, cared, and worried for her and in her sleep, her neighbor had come to her and cared for her. “It was a different world, a new world to her, that
Although it is a comic book, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is far from comic. Even with its witty side, it has earned its label as tragicomic through its dark, mournful string of events which relive Bechdel’s struggle with homosexuality, the suicide of her father, the discovery that her father was also homosexual, and the strained relationship with both her mother and father. To share her narrative, Bechdel intertwines her childhood and young adult experiences into one story, creating a tennis match of flashbacks. Bechdel chose a comic book as her medium in order to construct a story that is chronologically clear because of her use of scene-to-scene panels.
What makes you who you are?There are many factors that contribute to our identities and help shape our personalities.Two factors that contribute shape one's identity in positive and negative ways are good friends and family.
One of the main themes in Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier, is identity. This theme is evident in the main protagonist. The first way the main protagonist displays the theme of identity, is by not having a specific name. She is a simple, plain servant to Mrs. Van Hopper. Mrs. Van Hopper treats her as if she is nothing, making it obvious that the main protagonist does not know who she truly is, other than Mrs. Van Hopper’s servant. The second portrayal of the theme of identity in Rebecca is displayed when the main protagonist becomes involved with Maxim. Maxim finds the main protagonist unique and intriguing. He quickly starts to try and figure out who the main protagonist truly is by spending alone time with her. Soon, Maxim realizes she is
In Fun Home, Alison principally characterizes her desire for a masculine life while trying to find herself in an environment
Alice in Wonderland is a timeless and classic novel that has been rewritten and reinterpreted by authors many different times. Alice in Wonderland is put into the category of “Golden Age Children’s Literature” and is a novel with an enormous amount of value. With each new retelling of Alice in Wonderland new illustrations in the novel comes along. These new illustrations tell a lot about the culture of the artist and what their beliefs are. When Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland I am sure he did not expect Alice’s story to become such a key aspect of Golden Age Children’s Literature. Two editions of Alice in Wonderland that deserve to be studied are the Norton’s Critical Edition and the edition illustrated by Blanche McManus published in
The main theme of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is identity. Identity causes very much confusion and pain in the play and when true identity is found happiness reigns. Identity is a very important part of the play a character who struggles most with identity is Malvolio. Malvolio is the steward of Olivia and struggles greatly with identity throughout the play. His great egotism and ambition lead him to fall victim to a prank which leads him to question his identity. In the end he finds his place and is led back to where he started. In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night the main theme of identity is portrayed quite well in the character Malvolio as he struggles with finding his position in the world.
The Struggle for Identity in A Doll's House A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, is a play that was written ahead of its time. In this play, Ibsen tackles women's rights as a matter of importance. Throughout this time period, it was neglected. A Doll's House was written during the movement of Naturalism, which commonly reflected society. Ibsen acknowledges the fact that in 19th century life the role of the woman was to stay at home, raise the children and attend to her husband.