Page 106 of the chapter called “Old Father, Old Artificer” in Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel has a layout of four equal squares, indicating the important presence of her father as an authority. Allison communicates through the images only in the first two panels to let it paints how good her father is as an artist. In all of the panels, the objects in the house are what he interests in since his eyes and head face directly to them. The objects relate to his coldness and strictness as they do not have emotion just like him ignores his daughter. The first caption states, “MY FATHER COULD SPIN GARBAGE…” The word “spin” emphasizes the process of transforming the trash that her father finds into something more useful like an artist producing thread. Her speechless expression reveals that she must obey and stand there waiting to get ordered like a slave. This scene is zoomed out, which illustrates a feeling of isolation. The ellipses at the end of the narration lead the reader’s eyes into the next panel.
There is no dialogue in panel 2; there is just a narration at the top of the frame. It continues with the ellipses from the previous frame and states, “…INTO GOLD.” The ellipses implies that the process of bringing the trash and how he turns it into “gold” is unknown, as if the father has a big secret that he does not want to tell. The object is not gold, maybe it is in her father’s eyes, indicating that he treats the objects as his children more than his daughter who is beside him. He fixes the pillow’s position and looks at it but he is unsmiling like he is not satisfied with it, that it seems that it is the effect from his childhood problem like he was being neglected. The narrator only looks at him as though she really longs for th...
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...The house he recreates, to put everything in order as the drawing of how neat the couch and lights are arranged, means that he tries to rebuild himself and forget who he was. Even that is still not really perfect to him when he says “Slightly perfect,” he never feel content with it. He is good at making people think that his family is normal, but it is not really because we see the unsmiling face of the two neglected children in the background. The narration informs the reader of her feeling towards her father, comparing him with “an alchemist of appearance, a savant of surface, a Daedalus of décor.” Allison uses the metaphor of Daedalus (a Greek mythology whose son is Icarus who flows into the sun and the father does not concern) to compare to the complex relationship between him and her. She resents his love of decoration and art and feels more distanced from him.
In “Hands”, the author Ted Kooser is rationalizing the idea that since he has been in his fifties he sees his father in him. He uses imagery and symbolism so the reader will understand his father's impact upon his life.
She is acting childish for not respecting how nice it really is. The text states,"The lighting of the apartments, from the kitchen to parlors and chambers, is a tax indeed; and the fires we are obliged to keep to secure us from daily agues" (agues which means chills or shivering. This proves that she was acting childish because she was complaining instead of enjoying how nice it really is. So she is m=not appreciating what she has that others can't have.
Bruce, an “Old Father, Old Artificer,” uses his art form as a way of whitewashing his past memories and faults. The exclamation of the woman shows the extent her father has covered up the truth. He has put many unneeded items and decorations in the house, distracting people that visit. Alison likes things functional, while Bruce likes things very elaborate and over the top, not needed. These decorations have made people confused from what is there and what is not.
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
The book follows Asher's development as a person and an artist. Asher is very gifted as an artist and, when he was younger, couldn’t control himself. He often seems detached from the world around him and generally zoned out. As Asher grows, the conflict becomes more visible between art and religion. He makes more decisions about what is more important to him. The conflict becomes one not only of Asher's art, but of his need to express his feelings through it. Asher expresses his mother's pain is through a Christian symbol. Lev’s art has led him to accept a world that is very different from his Hasidus society, to evolve meaning from Christian symbols. On the other hand, he finds it freeing expressing himself and how he personally sees the world. His freedom comes at a price though.
In the first two pages of Fun Home, Bechdel associates her father most with Daedalus. Besides his Daedalus-like action of launching her into the sky on his legs, Alison describes him as a master craftsman. Bruce constantly fixes up the Bechdel home and finds beauty
The house identifies the artist as the “stranger who returns to this place daily’’ (21). The house uses the same words like “desolate” (23) “ashamed” (24) and the phrase “Someone holding his breath underwater” (28) to describe the man. The house two is looking at all the flaws of the man. But since the house sees the same flaws in the man as the man does in the house, it shows that they are both reflections of each other and it is the artist who personifying the house to tell this story. Both the house and the artist are empty, awkward, and eerie.
This quote proves the societal repression of women by using the figure in the wallpaper as a symbol of the main character, trying to escape the pattern of her daily life. She is beginning to see that what is making her depressed is having no control over her own life, she is trapped in the routine of being controlled by her husband. This quote is also an example of societal repression of women because she wants to get out of her life, get out of the room, and away from the wallpaper. The author included her change of view of the wallpaper at night in the moonlight as a way to show that when John isn’t paying attention she sees the flaws in him and her life, and realizes how much she would like to be free. She notices that there is someone trapped in the wallpaper and she later tries to help it escape, which symbolizes her escaping her pattern and encourages more women of her time to escape as well. The author used symbolism in order for the reader to understand how unhappy the women is with her role and expectations in her daily life. Prior to this quote, the narrator describes how the nursery is one of the less extravagant rooms in the house for
His choice of diction also suggests an impersonal feel to the house, as if the people inside it are living a bland and dull life. As Nick walks farther in he compares the 'frosted wedding cake of the ceiling' to the 'wine- colored rug' implying both purity and corruption. He views the cake-ceiling as pure since wedding cakes denote the meaning of innocence and purity but compares the innocence with wine which suggests corruption and impurity. Again, this comparison shows that Tom and Daisy's lives look pure as cake, however in reality their lives are as corrupt as wine. Upon meeting Daisy and Jordan, Nick perceives them as if they are?buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon.?
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...
There was once a very old man, who had a hammer nose. The old man had spent his last fifty-something years of heavy drinking along with his drunken friends. For the last five years he hadn’t had a drink. Not even a drop of any liquor. But why not?
Similarly, the furniture in the house is as sullen as the house itself. What little furniture is in the house is beaten-up; this is a symbol of the dark setting. The oak bed is the most important p...
The first panel is of college Alison speculating with her mother on her father’s death. The second panel is of the cemetery Bruce Bechdel is buried in, showing that his headstone is an obelisk. This panel is timeless, since it is not a precise action, but an existing place. The final panel is of Alison as a child playing with the obelisk door stop while her father watches. This page is particularly interesting because it works backwards in time: from Alison as an adult to Alison as a child. A non-chronological display of events shows that Bechdel is a writer first and an artist second. It places more emphasis on the words rather than the images. If this page were stripped of its writing, we would be left with pictures of Alison talking to her mother, a cemetery, and an obelisk doorstop. With only these images, they would be utterly lost and not receive the message that Alison suspects her father’s death to be suicide and that he had an obsession with obelisks that allude to his homosexuality. These frames seem to have no relation to each other, but Bechdel’s writing links them together. McCloud also explores a type of transition called non-sequitur which “offers no logical relationship between panels whatsoever!” (McCloud 72). There is overlap in these two transitions because often times, if there is no relation between panels, they
Stephen Dedalus is born of a woman, created of the earth; pure in his childhood innocence. From this beginning stems the birth of an artist, and from this the novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce recounts Stephen's story. His journey is followed from childhood to maturity, and thus his transformation from secular to saintly to an awakening of what he truly is. The novel evolves from simple, childlike diction, to sophisticated, higher ideas and thoughts as Dedalus completes his transition into an artist. In the beginning, Dedalus sees the world in an almost sing-song nursery rhyme sense, with a "moocow" coming down the road. By the end of the novel, Dedalus is mature and worldly; a man who stands tall and who feels confident with "Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead." (238). Through the use of the symbols of woman and earth, and white and purification, Joyce gives his novel depth and wonder. These symbols follow an array of transformations, changing throughout the novel much like Stephen himself.
In references to old objects in the setting and the past is a reference to the outdated practices and treatment of women. Gilman describes the garden of the house as “delicious” (2), perhaps, as an allusion to a woman’s place in the kitchen. Based on what the reader views in this story, a woman would naturally be fascinated by a garden. Gilman’s character is a naive, faithful wife who does as her husband instructs her to, which yet again connects her to the idea of how women are worth nothing in mens’ eyes. A home is considered to be a free place, but to the narrator and other women it may feel like a prison (e.g. the bars on the windows for the narrator) since all women are allowed is tend to the house and children (but not in the narrator’s case). The wallpaper, however, is the focal point of the author’s agenda for the story. Gilman slowly introduces the oppression of women through the wallpaper as a symbol of male authority. The stench of the paper gives a sense of pervasive and inescapable injustice, which is like the pervasive and foul effects of male domination. Only after reflection and contemplation can the symbols on the wallpaper be seen, and only then can the narrator understand her meaning. The patterns on the paper slowly develop from bulbous eyes to a woman shaking bars, creating a