A graphic novel is a story that actually has something to say, it means something, and/or it is nonfictional. It is set up like a comic but has more detail. A graphic novel is different form cartoon comics because it does not have the cartoon look and feel to it. A graphic novel is different form comic books and comic strips because even though it looks similar, it is different in the fact that this graphic novel is based on true events.
Who is Alison Bechdel? Is she the author? Is she the main character? The answer is yes, Alison Bechdel is both author and main character in her own graphic novel Fun Home. “Fun Home was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, and in a great moment for graphic narrative, was named Best Book of 2006 by Time Magazine. Time called the tightly architected investigation into her closeted bisexual father’s suicide ‘a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other’” (Dykes to watch out for). In her ground-breaking graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bechdel reencounters the times of her childhood with her father and the time after his death.
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...
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...s the place to find it in. Bruce Bechdel used literature as a way to trap his “victims”, the younger boys and men, before having sex with them. For Alison literature helped in a similar but completely different way after moving away to college. She was able to escape the reality of the harsh and judgmental world she lived in by reading and discovering her true self; She comes to the realization that she is a lesbian. Books have gotten her through good times and bad times and has even helped mend the relationship between her and her father.
As the narrator of her own story, we can trust Bechdel. In writing this book she does skip around on the time line like the story is being told as she remembers it, but she also does not censor any part of the story; she lays it all out on the table. Bechdel is pretty confident about her identity and is therefore credible.
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.
In Alison Bechdel’s comic “Compulsory Reading”, she creates an image of how she feels about the world of creative writing. Bechdel mentions different authors and well known titles like “Beloved”, Romeo and Juliet”, and Charles Dickens. She also mentions her distaste to novels as well. Bechdel uses media and design, rhetorical patterns, and tone to communicate how she feels about literature.
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
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.
Bambara, Toni Cade. "The Lesson." Eds. Hans P. Guth and Gabriele L. Rico. Discovering Literature: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997. 307-12.
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.
Roberts, Edgar V., Jacobs, Henry E. “Literature.” The Lesson. 470-475. Toni Cade Bambara. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 2001
Bambara, Toni Cade. "The Lesson." Eds. Hans P. Guth and Gabriele L. Rico. Discovering Literature: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
...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.
This novel went into how she and her father both were similar in how they expressed and experienced their own identification in gender roles. Either it being shown in their own way or even it is being through one another, they did not realize how close they were until she understood herself at the end. This then became the opening to them discusses their life experiences that involved identifying with another gender, which made them gain a better understanding about each other. The reason why the readers gain this perspective was how she used this graphic novel technique to become concise and obtain a mutual understanding in what she was expressing and explaining throughout the novel. With this mutual understanding of how she made this graphic novel, then the readers can focus more on how in the beginning they thought they were very different people, but later on grew to understand that both choose different gender roles. This gave them many similar outcomes, which help them grow even closer than they were before. With that Bechdel stated at the end, “ He did hurtle into the sea, of course. But in the tricky reserved narrative that impels our entwined stories, he was there to catch me when I leapt.”, which suggest that even if he is gone in real life he is still a part of her life’s
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...
Bambara, Toni C. "The Lesson." Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. 1142-147. Print.
Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, California: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUENG125.10.2/sections/sec2.3
Graphic novels never really stood out in literature until about 1978. People were against change and didn’t know how to accept a novel that has very little text and mostly illustrations to portray the story. Graphic novels are pretty much a book-length comic. They either tell a story from the beginning to the end or they consist of a collection of short stories within one book. Not all graphic novels are the same; some can illustrate history, drama, adventure, fantasy, even romance or comedy. Some can be nonfiction or fiction. Graphic novels are becoming more popular as time keeps ticking. Many people of all ages are becoming interested in this unique form of literature. The first graphic novel to get recognition was “A Contract with God” by W...