Anguish and Pain
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.
In her novel, Bechdel’s complex sexual self-development is a powerful struggle for her to figure out and acknowledge her sexual orientation. One can simply observe the pain and struggle Bechdel encountered in his process of self-development especially in one of her monologues when she discusses the impact of finding out about her father’s homosexual ways in his past. She states, “Only four months earlier (to her fathers suicide), I had made an announcement to my parents, ‘I am a lesbian’ but it was a hypothesis so thorough and convincing that I saw no reason not to share it immediately… My homosexuality remained at that point purely theoretical, untested hypothesis” (Bechdel 58). After receiving the news that her father was...
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...within her household. Within her own household, Alison was uncomfortable of being herself; in fact, at times she felt that she almost had no say in the selecting items such as clothes. This was also quite complex when it came to her subjectivity as well. Instances such as the time Bruce wanted Alison to wear a particular dress to a wedding, or when he insisted for her to were a particular set of pearls, would play a pivotal role in her sexual self development. Other factors such as her relationship with her girlfriend and the news she would find out following her fathers death seemed to also play an important part. Alison Bechdel’s battle in her sexual self-development was one full of anguish and pain because of all of its complexities but she now presents the confidence in herself and her sexuality to present in her eloquent and impactful graphic novel, Fun Home.
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.
Alison Bechdel wrote Fun Home as a memoir so that people understood the impact her father had on her. She went into great detail in this memoir about her childhood and moments after her father’s death. Which she claims her dad was a suicidal. During the memoir, she describes her relationship with her father. All issues, lessons, and arguments she had with her father are really significant to her. She uses her relationship with her father as the main point in the memoir. Their relationship had its ups and downs but she had very strong feelings for her father. Even though her father did not treat her as a girl most of the time, she managed to get over the fact of her father’s behavior.
Bechdel addresses some points that we see in today’s world regarding fatherhood and homosexuality, and Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, does a very good connecting those points with today’s society. Overall, she was able to understand and come to conclusions about things that she never understood while growing up. It was not until Bechdel was a little older and her father had passed away, that she realized that her father had a funny way of showing love. “But in the tricky reverse narration that impels our entwined stories, he was there to catch me when I leapt.” (Bechdel 232) The fact that that Alison’s father, Bruce, and herself were hiding their homosexuality and living a life that was far from normal, she was able to realize that the way her father was present in her life at that time, had to do a lot with gender role confusion, not knowing who he really was or accepting the truth leading him to his death. Besides the fact that her father never really showed much affection towards her, she still knew that her father cared in his own
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
Reading Chapter 11, “Genders and Sexualities,” written by Carrie Hintz was to construct and enact alternatives for these two traditional categories. Data is clearly indicated that sexual material is some of the most controversial content in literature. Children’s literature that is involved with adolescent’s childhood are key battlegrounds for attitudes about gender and sexuality. The significance of gender and sexuality in children’s literature is the persistent investment in what is perceived to be the innocence of children. Innocence is defined in part by children’s enforced ignorance of sexual matters. According to James Kincaid, “Youth and innocence are two of the most eroticized constructions of the past two centuries. Innocence was that
In the beginning of Fun Home, she identifies with Icarus primarily because she, in that memory, is the child. She explicitly describes this encounter with her father as a “reenactment of this mythic relationship” between Daedalus and Icarus (4). She ends up falling off her father’s feet, comparable to how Icarus fell to the sea. Although Bruce takes the role of Icarus at the end of the graphic novel, Bechdel still sees herself as Icarus as well. Alison lines up with Icarus based on their youth through images. This is seen mainly in the last panel, when Alison she is about to jump into the water just like Icarus. Saying that both she and her father took the role of Icarus at the end, Alison wouldn 't fall into the sea, but into the arms of her father (232). As Bechdel closes her novel, she poses various questions about what would happen if her father hadn’t died. It stands to reason that Bechdel refers to her own “inventive bent” while inquiring about her father. In this way, her “What if it had happened this way?” becomes not just Alison as a character attempting to cope with her father’s death, but also as a writer asking the classic question of “What if the story went this way?” Bechdel recognizes her ability to craft her story any way she likes, exploring the thought of what her story could have been if her father was still living. As Icarus, Alison has the ability to soar with the safety net of her father to catch her and enjoy her
In this lifetime, society has very pragmatic views. This makes it difficult to feel normal if you are considered different. You may be viewed as an outcast, which can make growing up harder than it already is. The idea of self-concealment is a sexual lesson that ones’ survival depends on.(Sullivan) Sullivan speaks of his own experience as a child, opening up with a story of an un-willful desire for a boy unchanging in front of him in the locker room. Sullivan states, “ He learns that that which would most give him meaning is most likely to destroy him in the eyes of others; that the condition of his friendships in the subjugation of himself”. This demonstrates why a homosexual may be deceitful and contained. Being young is a time to explore, understand ones’ self, and be open about your true personality. I believe the authors’ views because I see it daily .With these conflicts, a child may miss out on the carelessness of youth which is natural to experience before ...
With a heart-full of advice and wisdom, Dinah maturates from a simple- minded young girl to a valiant independent individual. “For a moment I weighed the idea of keeping my secret and remaining a girl, the thought passes quickly. I could only be what I was. And that was a woman” (170). This act of puberty is not only her initiation into womanhood but the red tent as well. She is no longer just an observer of stories, she is one of them, part of their community now. On account of this event, Dinah’s sensuality begins to blossom and she is able to conceive the notion of true love.
During the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth-century women’s sexuality was dictated by the family and society as there were specific rules put in place for each gender. This became problematic for women in the century, as they could not express their sexual identity. However, the protagonist in both Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) and Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop (1967) demonstrate the consequences of going against the family for women. Jeffrey Weeks states, “The very idea of sexual identity is an ambiguous one. For many in the modern world-especially the sexually marginal-it is an absolutely fundamental concept, offering a sense of personal unity. Social location, and even at times a political commitment.” (Capaln, 1989:
Ellen does not appear to be distressed about her sexuality through coming out and revealing her sexual identity, where it is reconstructed as a past of fear and shame. This depicts how confessional culture was taken in the society, whereby even the depictions of one’s identity and ...
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.
Alison Bechdel’s specific, artistic and organized design of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is her method of explaining and expressing her sentiments towards her unique transitioning from childhood through to adolescence and onwards into adulthood. Elements such as specific colour use, mise-en-page, panelling, and exploiting the gutter are each examples of how Alison Bechdel communicates her development throughout life and the hardship that came with it. Bechdel’s memoir was written to mirror her life in a way so that the reader is completely encompassed in her story, her artwork and her use of language and words.
What is it about sex that makes everyone so uncomfortable? Upon reading Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home, one of the major themes that the novel goes in depth about is Nidali’s sexual awakening. Many students would argue that this novel is littered with too much sexual activity, i.e. masturbation. However, A Map of Home is a novel about finding your place in this world; the search for your identity and purpose. Sexual identity plays a significant part of that continuum. You may question, “Well, could you have figure out a way to describe her story without all the sex stuff?” This statement would demolish the novel’s relatable and sheer honest tone, as well as disintegrate the genuineness behind the narrative if Jarrar would omit Nidali’s sexual experiences. The complete fact that young teenagers do think about sex so often makes one grasp the true relatability this novel showcases through the main character’s sexual experiences. In this essay, I plan to explore the importance of sexual awakening, Nidali’s own reasons for experimenting with her sexuality, and what we can ultimately learn from being open with what we want in that context.
As a wide-eyed (shocked to see a gay couple with a kid) but jaded (wrote a short story about sucking her Editor) twenty-two year old, she ventured out into the world to try to forge her own identity separate from the "Jenny” that was projected onto her. The best way she saw to achieve autonomy and spiritual independence was to bulldoze the false personas of Jenny already cemented. She accomplished this by breaking cultural and religious taboos (extramarital affair, same-sex unions, shouting
(Freud, 1905) Berie is stuck in the phallic stage due to her abnormal family set-up/unusual relationship with both her mother and father. When stuck in this phase, Freud says that the adult personality can contain the following traits: vanity, sexual anxiety, inadequacy, and inferiority. Even as a fifteen year old, Berie exhibited all of the possible traits, which were later exaggerated when her own husband treated her the same way that her emotionally-vacant father did. During her teenage summer, Berie felt like she was not as desirable as the other girls, and often hid in the corners of bars as the other girls danced the night away. Berie was ignored at home, around friends, at work, and most importantly by her best friend Sils, whenever there was a boy around. "The words "developed" and "undeveloped" filled me with dread and loathing," (Moore, 1994, 13) Placing worth in how others viewed her body, Berie spent many years feeling inferior to everyone around her; this timidness followed her through her adult life, permeating every area, including her