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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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.”
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 Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, she uses particular objects to relate themes to characters. For instance, Sunbeam bread is the most common placed object throughout the entirety of the novel. Sunbeam bread makes an appearance in the majority of scenes, otherwise known as panels, in Bechdel’s novel to symbolize a loss. The bread is present in many panels concerning the loss of her father, the loss of her childhood, and the loss of innocence.
...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.
Fun Home is about Alison Bechdel, her mom and dad, and her two brothers. Living in a small town in Pennsylvania, the Bechdel family owns and operates a funeral home that they come to call, the ”Fun Home”, which is also the title of this novel. Both of her parents are English teachers, but these are not what they truly yearn for in life. Alison’s mother has a true passion for acting and her father, Bruce Bechdel, enjoys restoring old houses to their original being and is able to, as Bechdel says it, “spin garbage into gold” (Bechdel page 6). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a...
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.
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.”
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...
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 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
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