Analysis Of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic By Alison Bechdel

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel, is a memoir dealing with how a father can live a normal life with his family despite being mentally unstable. Bechdel believes that her father was in her life but “his absence resonated retrospectively, echoing back through all the years…” (23). The memoir is told through a graphic novel to show readers that a person can look and act and be normal on the outside, but be suffering on the inside. Bechdel’s father wasn’t necessarily unstable his entire life, but most psychological problems start in childhood. In this memoir, Father is portrayed to the world as a normal guy. He has a wife that he loves, he has a job, he has children, he has a big house, and he has a passion. Father loved restoring

The myth of Icarus and Daedalus sums up to be; a father and son were trapped in a labyrinth, built by the father, so to escape the father built wings. The wings were made with wax so Icarus was warned to stay away from the sun, Icarus ignored this warning, his wings melted and he drowned in the ocean. Bechdel refers to Father as Icarus because “it was not me (Bechdel) but my father who was to plummet from the sky” (4). This is the first indication from Bechdel that something is wrong with Father, even with this being said the reader pays no attention to it because Father is then defined as Daedalus because he was “that skillful artificer, that mad scientist who built the wings for his son… and [he] who answered not to the laws of society, but to those of his craft” (7). Father 's craft was the restoration of his house; “He was… a Daedalus of Decor” (6), “He would perform, as Daedalus did, dazzling displays of artfulness” (9) but Father like Daedalus “was indifferent to the human cost of his projects” (11). Father had no recognition to the fact that he was using his children as slaves, and extensions of himself. Psychologically, a person who takes no interest in what others believe or feel is defined as having antisocial personality disorder, which Father displayed all the signs

“...maybe he felt that he’d become too inured to death…” (44). “You would think that the long nights employed in this scutwork of the flesh would make anyone reconsider the logic of not postponing the inevitable” (49) , you would think that knowing exactly what happens after death and seeing that life just ends and a body just exists in a lifeless way would make a man not want to die. You would think that, but for Father it didn’t matter. Bechdel describes Father as a confused man who threw himself at his work to cover up the fact that he was never happy. They had a full family, they did family things, but Father was missing something in his life; he was missing a lover, a male lover. The main reason Father killed himself is because he was depressed and had antisocial personality disorder. A person can live with these disorders but only with the help of loved