Analysis Of The Tragicomic Fun Home, By Alison Bechdel

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The tragicomic Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel, is generally considered one of the most important pieces of the modern LGBTQ canon of literature. The graphic novel tells the story of Alison Bechdel’s attempt to find the truth about her father’s sexuality and what lead him to possibly commit suicide. Along the way, Bechdel finds her own sexuality. Bechdel’s choice to write about her and her father’s simultaneous journey to finding their sexuality was revolutionary at the time. Very few authors were writing openly about their own sexuality, and something even more revolutionary that Bechdel addressed was mental illness. It’s unexpected so late in this story, on page 137, that Bechdel would include a lengthy section discussing her childhood Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Why
There are many reasons that Bechdel could have chosen to include this section, namely to accentuate the extent that she felt separated from her family, to compare how society, represented by her mother, has differing views about mental disorders and sexual orientation, and to show how reliable, or unreliable, she is as a narrator.
One reason Bechdel discusses her mental health in Fun Home is to show the direct effect that her parents had on her mental state growing up. On page 137, Bechdel mentions that one of her compulsions is perfectly lining up her sneakers. She labels the left shoe as her father and the right shoe as her mother. She tries to line them up perfectly as to not show favoritism for one show, or parent, over the other. Another compulsion of Bechdel’s mentioned on page 137 is that she felt the need to kiss all of her stuffed animals: “No matter how tired I was after all this, I had to

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