Analysis : Fun Home : A Family Tragicomic, By Allison Bechdel

- Characters: The main character is developed by what type of book the author is writing. My main character Sugar Mae Cole was developed because of the way she acts toward different characters in the book. And by her personality and sugars personality is sweet kinda like her name and she is polite. She is always trying to brighten the other characters up especially her mom Reba. She has a different personality that any of the other characters and connects with them in a different way that is what makes her the main character. she is cautious and also believes in people and things like her mom. Her mom Reba is about to give up but Sugar still believes in her and she believes she and her Mom will get a home and things will

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.

Picking up the book Fun Home, one would imagine that the novel would embellish some sort of comical life story of a misunderstood teenager. Although the short comic-book structured novel does have its sarcastic humor, Alison Bechdel explains her firsthand account of growing up with the difficulty of living of finding her true identity. Alison was a teenager in college when she discovered that she was a lesbian, however, the shock came when she also discovered her father was homosexual. I feel that the most influencing panel in Fun Home is where Alison and her father are in the car alone together. Not only does this panel explain the entirety of the novel in a few short speech bubbles, but it is the defining scene that connects

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is an autobiography written by Alison Bechdel. The graphic novel takes its readers through Alison Bechdel’s childhood using engaging diction and detailed drawings. One of the big themes of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is the discovery of one’s sexual orientation. Over the course of her life, Alison Bechdel eventually comes to the realization that she is a lesbian. Ultimately, Alison Bechdel uses this novel to recount her experience of events that helped to shape her personal identity, which resulted in a transformation of the way she sees herself. In the end, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a wonderful narrative that shows its readers the complexity of personal identity, and how things like love, the values of

We are all living in a society that is filled with social expectations of gender. From our early age, we seem to be able to response to these expectations accordingly. For example, we notice Barbies are for girls while robots and cars are for boys only. In the “Performative Gender”, “Doing Gender”, and “Nerd Box”, authors all indicate gender is learned instead of inherited. They bring out their insightful observation and critical personal experience to illustrate how the social expectations with punitive effects construct our gender unconsciously. These articles provide a great lens for us to understand the mental state and behaviors of the main characters in Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel portrays how living in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania during the 1930s not only repressed both her father, Bruce, and her from coming out as a homosexual and genderqueer, but also trapped her mother, Helen, in her “women box”. Through the graphic memoir, Fun Home is able to present the struggling process that one may need to go through before admitting one’s unusual gender identity and sexual orientation.

Throughout the 1950’s, the United States belonged to the Leave It To Beaver era. Families were structured around a strong, hard working father and a wonderful homemaker mother. Children were brought up with solid ideologies on what society expects from them and were warned about living a different and dangerous life. Only one-year separates Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room from there publishing dates during this decade of unwavering beliefs. These texts were seen as extremely controversial during their time due to their themes of homosexuality. Sexual orientation was an awkward topic during such a “to the book” time period and these texts pushed the limits, making them remarkable and memorable works. Both Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin explore the panic men experience while trying to comprehend what sexual orientation they belong to and highlight the masculine gay man. These texts also examine the woman’s role in the mist of it all.

The Birth House by Ami McKay tells the story of a young midwife named Dora, living in rural Nova Scotia during the early 1900’s. Dora is trained in midwifery by Ms. Babineau, the midwife of Scots Bay until her death when Dora takes over. Dora is challenged by Dr. Thomas, a professional doctor who opens up a modern hospital in the community who encourages the women of Scots Bay to abandon traditional midwifery as a means of giving birth. Dr. Thomas persistently attempts to convince the residents of Scots Bay that modern medicinal technology is a safer and cleaner means of giving birth than allowing Dora and Ms. Babineau to deliver their children, despite their vast knowledge and experience of women’s reproductive health. The novel discusses

In Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel composes a graphic memoir to inform readers about her journey of coming out as a lesbian to her parents. To add to this note, Bechdel also gives details about her family and how she discovers her father’s true sexuality – he is attracted to males. She builds the story around the tragic event of her father’s mysterious death.

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

The musical adaptation of Fun Home introduces a new element to the original story; Alison’s present self is no longer just a footnote to the text, but instead they brought her to life as an omnipresent observer of these memories transforming her into a character of her own story. Her presence in every scene of the stage adaptation is a visual replication of the authorial presence readers discern throughout the graphic novel. Similarities of the two “characters” are present from beginning to end, even if not always blatantly identical. In her text Bechdel writes, “I was Spartan to my father’s Athenian. / Modern to his Victorian. / Butch to his Nelly. / Utilitarian to his aesthete” (Bechdel 15); similarly, in Fun Home: The Musical, Bechdel’s character

I argue that the author of Fun Home, Alison Bechdel, intentionally ruses the reader to believe, or even further disbelieve, her suspicion that her father killed himself. The purpose she does this is not important for this essay, but I would contend it is to create discussion among critical thinkers. I would like to point out now, I do not intend to argue that she is fabricating the entirety of her father’s or anyone’s personality, or the events that took place. As far as my essay is concerned, she does all of this intentionally to have certain people believe her or question her credibility. My intention is strictly to discuss what may be her intentions for being so confident with believing her father’s death was a suicide, and to discuss her

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.

In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel demonstrates how myth and stereotyping contribute to the construction of prejudice. Alison’s father, Bruce Bechdel, lived a false life by denying his sexual orientation and created the illusion of a “normal” family life. By marrying a female and creating offspring, he perpetuated the public illusion that he had the perfect home and family. Despite this myth of perfect domestication, the true private life of the Bechdel family could be described as dysfunctional. Bechdel “witnessed only two gestures of action between” (Bechdel 68) her parents, which consisted of her father giving her mother “a chaste peck before leaving on a weekend trip” (Bechdel 68) and one time when her mother “put her hand on his back” (Bechdel 68) as they watched television. Bechdel writes how on both occasions, she “was astonished and discomforted” (Bechdel 68) and suggests that both her mother and father preferred “fiction to reality” (Bechdel 85). Both Bruce Bechdel and his wife, lived in a world where they did not acknowledge reality; it was easier for them to live a lie then to come to terms with Bruce’s homosexual identity. The conflict within the family could be attributed to Bruce’s suppression of his sexuality, which in turn, could be attributed to growing up in a time period when it was

I reworked Daniel Defoe’s Roxana in the graphic novel style of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. Initially, the reason I chose the two novels was to see how well the oldest text on the course could be adapted into the newest. Interestingly the texts proved to be quite similar in narrative; both are versions of autobiography (although one fictional and one true), both feature a retrospective first person, self-conscious narrator (Booth 155), and both centre around a female protagonist deviating from societal norms of the time. Fittingly enough Roxana also mentions her father in the beginning, although she leaves him dead quite quickly. Adapting a novel into a graphic novel is a drastic stylistic change, and my biggest concern was to keep my adaption steadily tied with the two texts, whilst trying not to get too carried away in the creative process.

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.