Alison Bechdel Fun Home Analysis

The readers are able to take a glimpse into his childhood and adulthood which contrast greatly. For instance, George’s childhood is difficult in ways that can relate to people in the real world. He is brought up in a household where his mother Kathleen’s “humourless regime mask[s her] bitterness far deeper than any of her children and husband imagine.” (92) Kathleen is still “shocked” (92) that she is a wife and a mother so she buries her feelings under “layer upon layer of domestic strictness” (92) hiding her feelings from her children thereafter making them believe that her humourless feelings are just a part of her personality. Because of Kathleen’s views towards the topic of family are bitter, she believes that her epileptic husband should be sent away to an asylum out of pure bitterness rather than care of his well-being. George’s parents do not see eye to eye on this matter. Howard “could not have let himself be witness to the simultaneity of his wife passing him a place of chicken or a basket of hot bread as she worked out her plans to have him taken away.” (128) The feeling of secretly not being wanted by his wife is too hard for him to bare which causes him to abandon his family. Because George witnesses the relationship between his parents crumble and that is when he decides to live a life away from it all, where he raises a family of his own in ways opposite of his own

In the novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Lennie and George have both similarities and differences that are revealed throughout the storyline. These comparisons and contrasts are used to explain their unique friendship and dependency on one another. The story begins with the description of their physical and intellectual differences and establishes their roles of who is the dominant one. The story shares the obstacles that have stood in the way of them obtaining their “American Dream” to own land, even if they if they have different motivations. The story concludes with the difficult choice that George makes to end Lennie’s life himself, out of his love for his friend.

Some discoveries may be the result of significant experiences that one undergoes. In moving on from these experiences, the discoveries can be provoked and have the ability to open the eyes of individuals. Gwen Harwood’s “Father and Child” explores the growth and maturation of a child. Harwood shows the juxtaposition between innocence and maturity and the way that discovering this deepens the perception one has of the world. The

The memoir of Jeannette Walls had several characters, important people in her life. But, there was one specific character, her dad, that she had a close relationship with. Jeannette Walls grew up in poverty and always moved around. Her family was close, but Jeannette was closest to her father over anyone else. She loved and admired her father and defended him too. Her memoir, “The Glass Castle” is very popular. She is a grown-up now and cares about her parents. She offers to help them out of poverty, but they resist. Jeannette certainly cares for both parents, but her father has a special place in her heart. Jeannette has a special relationship with her father because she admired his heroicness, she got to pick Venus as her star, and he helped her and distracted her from being scared and in pain.

Poetry is like a song without music, it has the ability to awaken your emotions and the ability to tell stories that can paint beautiful, relatable, imagery in the viewer’s mind. Upon reading the poem, “My Son the Man” by Sharon Olds, she presents a unique view on her bittersweet experience of watching her son gravitate towards manhood, “Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider” (line1), while realizing he is astute enough to escape his mother’s strong hold, “to learn the way out” (line 16). As a mother myself, I began to recognize how I can relate to the speaker’s challenges of understanding a child’s need to test limits and break free from dependency. I realized through the speaker’s obvious allusions to Houdini expressing the need to break free, the contrast used to convey the indirect references to Houdini, and the similes used to express emotion toward reflecting back on a time of innocence, accepting the need of a maturing child’s independence proves the strength of a mother’s love.

The way Bechdel decides to depict the characters through her art is a major factor in how the characters are developed, and can be a major factor in how the story is perceived. At a first glance, the depiction of Bechdel’s persona, Alison, in “Are You My Mother?” appears to have very masculine features. An uninformed reader may at first assume that the story is about a man. However, through the dialogue and narration it is quickly revealed that the drawings are depictive of a homosexual woman. Bechdel’s portrayal of herself in the graphics as having very masculine features says a lot about her self-perception. She creates her own persona, so the character seen in the cartoons is Bechdel in her own image and likeness. Clearly, Bechdel illustrated her comic so that the character bared a strong resemblance to her own self-image. Later on in the story, starting on page 83, Alison is depicted wearing glasses and she bears a much stronger resemblance to actual pictures of Bechdel. In several scenes throughout the story, including the opening scene, Bechdel has dreams of herself as a child. These scenes showed a young Alison, dressed in what would widely be considered boys clothing (Bechdel 73). The illustrations as a whole are very sexually ambiguous. This may be perceived as an allusion to Bechdel’s struggles with her own sexuality. However, the refrences to Bechdel’s struggles go beyond the art.

The father’s way of dealing with his inner issues is reflected by the way he distracts himself with hobbies of the women he loves. This illustrates how a sudden tragedy can influence someone’s lifestyle. In fact, before his first wife passed away he showed a lot of interest in art and when she died he was lost and devastated ,” (…) after mom died, my sister and I used to worry about his living alone. And he was lonely.We knew that after putting in his usual twelve-hours workday, he would return to the empty house (...) then read medical journals until it was time to go to sleep.”(16). This implies that

Sonja Livingston is a talented and unique young writer who uses an unusual structure in her work. Structure is the form that an author’s writing takes; how the sentences are formed and how they are placed together to create the work. In Ghostbread, her award-winning novel, Ms. Livingstone uses a freeform chapter structure that, while roughly in chronological order, is not necessarily linear. In chapter 3, Ms. Livingston speaks of her father, “I had no father” (6), and then in chapter 4 she speaks of a childhood friend, “My favorite person should have been Carol Johnson.” (7) Through the course of the book, Ms. Livingston chronicles her life from birth to age 18, but it is not a strict telling; she meanders and explores events as they are remembered, not bound by a rigid timeline. The structure of her work is unconventional and through that unconventional structure she gives the reader an experience that is more like poetry than a conventional novel. Towards the end of Ghostbread, Ms. Livingston contemplates the effect that her miscarriage and the revelation of her sexual activity will have on her relationship with her mother with this passage, “Sex. Pregnancy. Men. What were they to her? Failure? Freedom? Power? Paths she followed, but did not prescribe. At least not aloud.” (212). The use of partial sentences and imagery are elements commonly associated with poetry and it gives

Few relationships are as deep as those between child and parent. While circumstance and biology can shape the exact nature of the bond, a child’s caretaker is the first to introduce them to the world. And as they grow and begin to branch out, children look to their parents as a model for how to interact with the various new situations. Through allusion, potent imagery, and nostalgic diction, Natasha Trethewey constructs an idolized image of a father guiding their child through life’s challenges only to convey the speaker’s despair when they are faced with their father’s mortality in “Mythmaker.”

Part graphic memoir and part psychoanalytical study, Alison Bechdel’s, Fun Home, is a charming story about a girl’s search for identity within an unconventional family. The novel style autobiography frames Alison’s childhood and adolescence as she struggles with themes of sexual confusion, gender identity, and convoluted family dynamics. These ideas are explored through the examination of Alison’s relationship with her father, and their shared passion for literature.

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 Bechdel employs words and graphic devices to render specific events. One can also see how the specific content of the pages thematically connects to the book as a whole. As we will see, this portion of the book echoes the strained relationship

In the novella Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck, the relationship between Lennie Small and George Milton is complex. Lennie and George are two companions who look for work and brave the hardships of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression together. Although Lennie and George are both grown men, their relationship resembles more of a child and a single parent, or a boy and his dog. Lennie is portrayed as animalistic and childish through his behavior and Steinbeck’s comparisons. This reveals the crucial power dynamic in George and Lennie’s relationship.

Fun Home is a retelling of Alison Bechdel’s life through the lens of her relationship with her father. However, because of what she considers to have been his suicide, Alison is left with an incomplete picture of who he was in life. By calling Fun Home an autobiography, Bechdel enters an autobiographical pact with the reader that ensures that what Bechdel is telling us is the truth. However, elements out of her control leave Bechdel unable to provide certain objective facts necessary to her narrative. As an attempt to remedy these absences and in turn maintain the validity of her story, Bechdel uses intertextuality to fill in the gaps of in her retelling. By overlaying masterplots of fictional narratives over her own, the reader is able to get at an understanding of the kind of person Alison’s father was. In this way Bechdel is able to reveal things about her father that she can 't prove to be true, but are reflective enough of his life to become true.

The mother-daughter relationship is often scrutinized, publicized, and capitalized on. Whether from tell-all biographies, to humorous sit-coms, or private therapy sessions, this particular relationship dynamic gives some of the most emotion-activating memories. When female authors reflect and write about their relationships with their mothers, they have a tendency to taint their reflections with the opinions they have as an adult, reviewing the actions of their mother when they were young. These opinions set the tone of the story independently and in conjunction with the relationship itself and manifest in creative literary styles that weave an even more intricate story. Case in point, when reviewing the two literary works “I Stand Here

The book “Fun Home: A FAMILY TRAGICOMIC” is a captivating autobiography that entertains readers as well as engages audiences. The content provided in the book challenges views on normative stereotypes while offering a unique perspective. The book impresses upon readers a stir of emotions while conveying messages effortlessly. The memoir focuses upon uncomfortable subjects such as death, homosexuality, and coming of age offering a candid look into aspects of the Bechdel’s life. The book is an interesting read, the subject matter produced is relatable to readers and unique in its format. Additionally, the content produced in the book relies on her relationship with her father, which aids in entertaining audiences because of their strange kinship.