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Transformation story essay
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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 …show more content…
Bruce Bechdel 's tombstone is a penis shape figure, a shape he loved. He even collects obelisks before his demise, and this odd hobby comes to symbolize his pursuit of youngs boys. In Bechdel 's illustrations of Bruce calling young Alison into the embalming room, she highlights the cadaver 's penis by interpreting it in intense portion. Although such a raw picture of the male sexual organ might wonder the reader, Alison does not display any type of emotion whatsoever. Young Alison 's indifference finally relates to Bruce Bechdel 's hidden homosexuality - a part of himself that he suppressed. Later, his daughter learns to suppress her emotional response to his loss of
Living Out by Lisa Loomer is a play that tells the story of the complicated relationship between a Salvadoran nanny and the lawyer she works for. Both women are smart, hard-working mothers who want better lives for their children. The play explores many similarities and differences between them. Through the main character Ana, we understand what it’s like to leave a child in another country and to come to come to the United States. We also get what the potential cost is like to sacrifice your own child in order to care for someone else's. Through the lawyer; Nancy, we understand the pressure on women today. How they try to do everything perfectly and sometimes having to put work before their family. The play also looks at the discrimination and misconceptions between Anglos (White American’s) and Latinos.
Going through this comic you find yourself looking at many innocent objects she uses to describe the way her house is set up. She refers to it as a museum. As we discover her dad sexual orientation, we find many of the objects resembles body parts. Other things like the painting of the
During the third stage which was initiative vs. guilt. Bruce was wondering why he was feeling that something was missing in his life. Bruce when he was around this age felt always like he didn’t fit in. Bruce would spend a lot of time alone really did not like talking to other children.
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
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.
Alison Bechdel uses her graphic memoir, Fun home, to explore her relationship with her father. She uses the book as a tool to reflect on her life and the affect her father had on her. She discovers how her fathers closeted sexuality affected her childhood and her transition into adulthood. His death left a powerful mark and left her searching for answers. She clearly states this when she says, “it’s true that he didn’t kill himself until I was nearly twenty. But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him.” (23). This feeling drove her to look back on their relationship and find what binds her so strongly to a man she never understood.
...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.
In the late 1970’s, in order to feel some sort of a connection to his gender identity Bruce
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...
In literary works, the strong messages and ideas presented by an author whether it may be real world connections or an individual experience that engages the reader and manipulation one's emotions in order to mak a reader feel something and gain a message from the text. In the essay, Causes and Consequences of Conflict-Induced Displacement by Sarah Keynon Lischer and the story poem, “Home” by Warson Shire both texts expanded upon modern-day struggles for an individual group of people in distinct ways but both providing the same key message. Sarah Keynon Lischer idea about political violence affecting refugees helps me understand the fictional source “Home” by Warson Shire, through race, to convey the theme that war and political violence dehumanizes
From Monica Pearl’s Redrawing the family (romance) in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home Pearl depicts the use of paradox in the comic and how these paradoxes apply to the “identities of the family members” (Pearl 269). Although Pearl notices the paradoxes of the story she fails to touches on the myth of Icarus and Daedalus more than the surface of the instead of looking at the symbolic nature the tale has with the characters and their multiple perspectives. Bruce Bechdel is seen to be described as the Daedalus through the beginning of the book as Alison describes how he would “perform, as Daedalus did, dazzling displays of artfulness” (Bechdel 9). Having Bruce being like Daedalus juxtaposes Alison to being Icarus. With Bruce being a Daedalus figure he is in the first panel of the comic lifting Alison in the air in a game of “airplane” which could be synonymous to Daedalus lifting Icarus into the sky with the wax wings in their story. The roles of Daedalus and Icarus between the father and daughter seems to change as the sexual awareness of Alison emerges. The more Alison comes out with her gayness the more she seems to take on the role of father and leader as one such as Daedalus. Bruce becomes a figure of secret harbouring and is never freed from his cage he created through hiding his gayness while Alison breaks free
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
When analyzing the 1950s, it is clear that racial segregation, strict sexual mores, oppressive women’s rights, and high materialism were considered normal. Interracial marriage and divorces were an abomination in this time period and there was a major issue with racism in the 50s. Additionally, women were held to a different standard than men, they were to maintain the home and rear children, it was thought to be their only purpose. Furthermore, homosexuality was believed to be a sickness that could be cured, it was forbidden by society to be a homosexual. The 1960s counter-culture was all about rallying against these. This paper argues that despite the values of the 1950’s that the counterculture sought to reject, issues under the surface
“Home is where love resides, memories are created, friends always belong, and laughter never ends (Robot check).” A place becomes a home for me when I am around all the things that I enjoy and love. For example, when I am around everyone that I love, I enjoy a peaceful environment and the beautiful landscapes around me. The interpretation of home for me is not a physical thing that I see or that I can remember or even certain thoughts that I can relate, but it is a sensation that overcomes me when I envision being in the comfort of my own home. However, I know that this is a feeling that is calming to my soul and it quietly reassures me that I genuinely belong in a place where I can be free from people constantly judging me.