Fun Home By Alon Bechdel

The Tides Have Turned The circus acts known as Icarian Games have existed for hundreds of years, and the origin myth of Icarus and Daedalus even longer. This story of a father and son is very prevalent in Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home. Bechdel’s relationship with her father has various parallels to this myth, but who plays which role? Bechdel distorts the Icarus-Daedalus myth to illuminate her views on the role reversal within her growing relationship with her father. 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

In the beginning of Fun Home, she identifies with Icarus primarily because she, in that memory, is the child. She explicitly describes this encounter with her father as a “reenactment of this mythic relationship” between Daedalus and Icarus (4). She ends up falling off her father’s feet, comparable to how Icarus fell to the sea. Although Bruce takes the role of Icarus at the end of the graphic novel, Bechdel still sees herself as Icarus as well. Alison lines up with Icarus based on their youth through images. This is seen mainly in the last panel, when Alison she is about to jump into the water just like Icarus. Saying that both she and her father took the role of Icarus at the end, Alison wouldn 't fall into the sea, but into the arms of her father (232). As Bechdel closes her novel, she poses various questions about what would happen if her father hadn’t died. It stands to reason that Bechdel refers to her own “inventive bent” while inquiring about her father. In this way, her “What if it had happened this way?” becomes not just Alison as a character attempting to cope with her father’s death, but also as a writer asking the classic question of “What if the story went this way?” Bechdel recognizes her ability to craft her story any way she likes, exploring the thought of what her story could have been if her father was still living. As Icarus, Alison has the ability to soar with the safety net of her father to catch her and enjoy her