Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic Analysis

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The graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic was written by Alison Bechdel. The book is an autobiography about Alison Bechdel’s childhood. Throughout the book, Bechdel recounts her journey as she goes through adolescent life, struggling to understand her own identity and the identity of those close to her. Bechdel and her family would often use various artistic endeavors to express themselves instead of communication. Ultimately, this novel is about the unbearable isolation one can experience from a lack of affection and attention, and the effects it can have on one’s life. One of the most important pages in the entire novel is page 134. Page 134 has three different drawings featured on it and seven sentences. The first drawing shows young Alison Bechdel completely annoyed with her family’s obsession with their isolating artistic activities. She writes, “But it was all that sustained them, and was thus all-consuming” (Bechdel 134). Bechdel uses this drawing and sentence to illustrate to her audience how obsessed her family was with their art, which ultimately resulted in their seclusion from one another. Bechdel wants her readers to know beyond a doubt that her family has always been inaccessible to her, even from such a young age. As an introvert, I can …show more content…

For this drawing she writes, “From their example, I learned quickly to feed myself” (Bechdel 134). Here, Bechdel is telling her readers that due to her family’s “all-consuming” creativeness, she had to learn to take care of herself and become self-sufficient (134). This drawing is simply reiterating the effect that Bechdel’s inattentive family had upon her. This is an important theme in the novel that reappears again and again because it is such a central theme in Bechdel’s life. This subject matter makes me feel quite sorrowful for Bechdel due to her perpetual

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