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
in her own graphic novel Fun Home. “Fun Home was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, and in a great moment for graphic narrative, was named Best Book of 2006 by Time Magazine. Time called the tightly architected investigation into her closeted bisexual father’s suicide ‘a masterpiece about two people who live in the same house but different worlds, and their mysterious debts to each other’” (Dykes to watch out for). In her ground-breaking graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bechdel
Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, documents the author's discovery of her own and her father's homosexuality. The book touches upon many themes, including, but not limited to, the following: sexual orientation, family relationships, and suicide. Unlike most autobiographical works, Bechdel uses the comics graphic medium to tell her story. By close-reading or carefully analyzing pages fourteen through seventeen in Fun Home one can get a better understanding of how a
relationship with her father. 7: coming of age 8: Why is this book becoming more common in college classes-why do you think that is? Alison Bechdel’s best-selling graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is
Alison Bechdel’s specific, artistic and organized design of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is her method of explaining and expressing her sentiments towards her unique transitioning from childhood through to adolescence and onwards into adulthood. Elements such as specific colour use, mise-en-page, panelling, and exploiting the gutter are each examples of how Alison Bechdel communicates her development throughout life and the hardship that came with it. Bechdel’s memoir was written to mirror her life
Alison Bechdel 's "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" is an exciting autobiography with comics that bring her story to life. Alison Bechdel wrote this book about her childhood, the relationship she had with her father and one of the many things they shared in common, their sexuality. In addition to their common homosexuality, Alison and Bruce Bechdel share o b sessive compulsive tendencies and their artistic ways, even using her artistic language to describe the father daughter relationship they had
Anguish and Pain In the graphic novel Fun Home, by Allison Bechdel, sexual self-discovery plays a critical role in the development of the main character, Allison Bechdel herself; furthermore, Bechdel depicts the plethora of factors that are pivotal in the shaping of who she is before, during and after her sexual self-development. Bechdel’s anguish and pain begins with all of her accounts that she encountered at home, with her respective family member – most importantly her father – at school, and
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
its own unique qualities and traits that create an individual that is different from any other human being. How this individuality is formed depends on the environment that a person has lived through and their experiences. Alison Bechdel grew up in a home with a father who alienated himself from his family so that he could conceal a dark secret from his life. Nevertheless, Bechdel was able to take from her past so that she could become a strong and independent women who kept true to who she was. Likewise
Fun Home: A Man’s Struggle with His Sexuality History does not lack examples of the persecution and what could be considered a mass genocide of the people who are labeled as outcasts in our society. People are often fearful of being considered weird or to be seen as outside of society’s norms. However, there are also people who would die before having to shape themselves according to what society expects them to be. Every Pride parade shows us the resilience of people who are seen as outcasts in
way. Marilyn finds that she is unable to thrive in the small town and runs away to Toledo, where she believes she can finally be who she wants to be; however, she discovers that she is pregnant and is forced to return home to the small town she came from, “all she could do is go home” (Ng143-144). This specific example showcases the way that despite wanting the separation, cutting the family ties is very difficult. The
Alison Bechdel’s tragicomic titled Fun Home which is a memoir of her experience in adolescence and maturity into a young woman. Bechdel’s use of mythology throughout her tragicomic allows for a more enhanced metaphor of the two-sided nature that is presented through her father, herself, and their home. The use of myth addresses some modern dualities within the characters but looking at the form of religion Bechdel’s father can be depicted as a Christ figure early In the comic and this perhaps is
Although it is a comic book, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is far from comic. Even with its witty side, it has earned its label as tragicomic through its dark, mournful string of events which relive Bechdel’s struggle with homosexuality, the suicide of her father, the discovery that her father was also homosexual, and the strained relationship with both her mother and father. To share her narrative, Bechdel intertwines her childhood and young adult experiences into one story, creating a tennis match
Fun Home- more like undesirable home! Victory Gardens Theater presented its audience with an impeccable musical performance named Fun Home. The inspirational story of Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir Fun Home received five tony awards for its musical performance. In this graphic memoir, we are driven into the world of Alison and her family discovering the intense impact sexual orientation has on this family. As this musical play unravels it becomes more intense with the issues of a family whose unsure
Rebecca Anderson Dr. Bina Freiwald ENGL 393 // Topic 4 21 April 2014 Resisting Voices: The Retrospective Experience of Narration in Fun Home In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, the reader adopts a voyeuristic role in order to vicariously understand the dynamics of each panel while emphasizing the collaborative importance of images and words. Whether we watch Alison and her father Bruce sitting side by side, separated by two windows (Bechdel 86), or witness her sitting in the washroom after menstruating
Breaking the Cycle: The Failures of Parenting in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home Domestic violence is a vicious cycle; one parent abuses their child, their child grows up and abuses their child, and the cycle continues until someone decides to break it. Sometimes domestic violence takes many generations before someone decides to stop the cycle. The parent who breaks the cycle wants a better life for their child than what they had. For most parents this is the ultimate goal of raising children, giving them
In Fun Home: A Family Tragic Comic, Alison Bechdel uses the graphic novel technique of bringing visuals and concise text to her audience to reveal the relationship with her father in a perspective that can not be modified through the readers perspective and interpretation. Bechdel employs this type of writing style to help visualize a better interpretation of how she describes the differences in both her and her fathers’ gender roles throughout the novel. This tactic helps discuss and show how these
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is a novel about a girl who discovers not only her sexuality, but family secrets too. This novel walks readers through the story of the development of a lesbian identity through the use of visual and verbal representation of memories and interpretive acts. The narrator, Alison, draws pictures of her memories through original scenes, passages from novels, photographs, lines from family letters, interior décor, and dialogue. She opens up her life to readers and wants to make
Media Analysis on Fun Home by Alison Bechdel: Whiteness and White Privilege The novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel is about the Bechdel family, and the struggles that they endured during their lifetime. The Bechdel family lived in a town in Pennsylvania and directed a funeral home business. Alison’s father Bruce was having sexual relationships with men and boys, the mother Helen, was fully aware of Bruce’s adulterous actions. Alison discovered at an early age that she wanted to
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel and Rape Fantasies by Margret Atwood both express the heteronormative stereotypes and repression. Fun Home is a comic autobiography of Alison Bechdel’s life from a young girl to a young adult as she discovers with her own lesbian sexuality, while her father Bruce’s suspicious death, and the secret homosexuality that he kept hidden from everyone throughout his life while having affairs with underage boys. Rape Fantasies is a short story in which the