Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

The structure of a novel enables it to embody, integrate and communicate its content by revealing its role in the creation and perception of it. A complex structure such as that of Robert Drewe’s work The Drowner, published in 1996, refers to the interrelation or arrangement of parts in a complex entity1. Drewe’s novel is a multi-faceted epic love story presenting a fable of European ambitions in an alien landscape, and a magnificently sustained metaphor of water as the life and death force2. The main concerns of the novel include concerns about love, life, death and human frailty. These concerns are explored through the complex structure of the novel. That is, through its symbolic title, prologues, and division into sections. The

An emphasis on family is one of the central facets of Native American culture. There is a sense of community between Native American. Louise Erdrich, a Chippewa Indian herself, writes a gripping bildungsroman about a thirteen year old boy named Joe who experiences all forms of family on the Native American Reserve where he lives. He learns to deal with the challenges of a blood family, witnesses toxic family relationships, and experiences a family-like love from the members of the community. In her book, The Round House, Louise Erdrich depicts three definitions of the word family and shows how these relationships affect Joe’s development into an adult.

Tim Winton’s short story, ‘The Water Was Dark and it Went Forever Down’, depicts a nameless, adolescent girl who is battling the voices inside her head along with the powerful punishments at the hands of her inebriated mother. The key concerns of life and death are portrayed through the girl’s viewpoint as she compares her life with her sad, depressed mother. Anonymous as she is, the girl constantly makes an attempt to escape the outbursts, that come as a result to her mother’s drinking, by submerging herself into the water. An extended metaphor is used when expressing the girl as a machine and her will to continue surviving in her sombre life.

For this essay, I am going to be discussing the short story “Swimming” found on the New Yorker, and written by T. Cooper. I have chosen this story for many reasons, and among those reasons is the personal sadness I felt when I first read the story, almost as if the universe was placing a certain theme in my life, that only the main character could possibly understand. I am talking about running, the god given instinct felt by all men, inherent in the nature of fear, and brought out in all who feel sadness in its full intensity. Though in my short life I can not compare the sadness I have felt with that of losing a child at my own hand, but if I had been placed in that situation, if fate had tempted my soul with such a sequence of events, I would like to think I could find the strength to endure and the courage to not abandon all I had previously known. Yet I am able to reconcile the themes of grief, the mode of recovery, and the longing to escape such a terrible tale. I think in this piece, as I will discuss in later parts, the author was able to put into words a transformation we rarely get to observe in closeness, the kind of transformation that turns a kind man into a “just man” the kind of death that turns this world from a beautiful and happy place into a world that is closing in on our main character, that is forcing him to surface temporarily and gasp for air, much like he does when he finds peace in the water, wading breath after air, after sea. I firmly believe that

“The Swimmer,” a short fiction by John Cheever, presents a theme to the reader about the unavoidable changes of life. The story focuses on the round character by the name of Neddy Merrill who is in extreme denial about the reality of his life. He has lost his youth, wealth, and family yet only at the end of the story does he develop the most by experiencing a glimpse of realization on all that he has indeed lost. In the short story “The Swimmer,” John Cheever uses point of view, setting and symbolism to show the value of true relationships and the moments of life that are taken for granted.

Loss affects every relationship differently. Sometimes it brings people together, and sometimes it tears people apart. The novel “Past the Shallows”, written by Favel Parrett, is an excellent example of this, as it focuses on less vocalised subjects that most people in our society see as taboo. The aspects of society mentioned are points such as child abuse, alcohol addiction, pain, loss, and change, but most obviously the family centred in all this drama and the dysfunctional relationships formed between them. The story follows Miles, Harry, Joe, and their father, living on the south coast of Tasmania, and the struggles in their life. The themes of familial relationships, and loss feature throughout the novel, and will be discussed within this essay.

“And it hits me, not then, but today, thirty years later. Thirty years too late”(91). Those are the words of Jessamyn Hope when speaking about her experience with regret regarding her life’s decisions, the major theme for her essay. Her essay tells the story about how she failed to overcome two life challenges, one having a direct physical impact and the other having a delayed impact. The essay “The Reverse Dive” by Jessamyn Hope is a narrative essay looking to persuade its reader through the use of analogy, empirical evidence, and appeal to emotion that one should face their challenges while they can to avoid regrets.

Life is filled with tragedies, whether they be subtle or monumental. In society we are constantly surrounded by hardships and situations that test our own individual character, forcing us to react in order to move forward. The main characters in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates each react differently to the various tragedies they encounter, revealing their true identities that lie behind the (facade?)/version of themselves they present to the world. These tragedies that factor into all three works are both presented and interpreted differently in each story: In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, Mrs. Mallard rejoices

Notwithstanding their partner’s contempt of reading and writing, both the father in “The Boat,” and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” continue to search for reprieve through their respective books and diary.

Indigenous communities in Canada have long suffered from trauma that has largely been afflicted by Canada’s colonial past. This very idea is still prevalent today. “it takes an ocean not to break,” begins with the somber thoughts of the narrator reflecting on the suicide of a youth, she deeply cared about. who was close to her. Her statement: “i was in love with the idea that finally we had given birth to a generation that didn’t have to spend their adult lives recovering from their childhood.” (Simpson 79) represents the hope that in 21st century intergenerational trauma would no longer be prevalent in Indigenous society. The narrator also mentions “you weren’t going to drown yourself in anything.” (Simpson 79) This references the idea of substance abuse that has been prominent in Indigenous communities. The hopeful ideas quickly disappear when the speaker faces reality and the fact the youth was in a collision course with “a diagnosed train wreck”. (Simpson 79)

Rather than exploring lighter tones in her stories, she can only express herself through trauma. Let’s now explore what methods Danticat uses to explore such literary cliché’s within ‘Children of the Sea’.

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.

This theme can be further developed by a piece of text from “The Seafarer” where the speaker proclaims “No passion for women, no worldly pleasures, Nothing, only the ocean’s heave; But longing wraps itself around him” (lines 45-47), which gives the reader an idea of how much the speaker seems to have lost. According to my personal analysis of “The Seafarer” the speaker seemed to have enjoyed the sense of adventure he faced when

As I read Fun Home, often reading chapters more than once, I had quite a few questions floating around inside my head. Alison Bechdel dedicates her memoir to “Mom, Christian, and John. We did have a lot of fun, in spite of everything”. I found it odd that she didn’t include her father in this as well. After all, without her father, she would not have had much of a story.

Satan Says, her first award-winning book is a feminist exploration of gender politics and adolescent discovery. Olds’ Pulitzer Prize winning volume Stag Leap is a surprisingly tender look at divorce in modern American culture. Olds’ poems often deal with the victories and contradictions of being a woman in the United States during a time when the country has often been involved in racial upheavals and military conflicts overseas. “She investigates the victories and contradictions of being a wife and mother during the era of feminism, as one of our most honest, most overt poets of female sexuality and its relationship to family life and its place within the history of humanity (Brickey).” With the publication of Stag's Leap, it is very clear that Olds is writing about the sudden, unexpected death of her 32-year marriage when her husband left to be with another woman.