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 …show more content…
Throughout the novel, Bechdel seems to struggle with the more affectionate side of love, especially when it comes to her family. This is demonstrated when she writes, “We were not a physically expressive family, to say the least” (Bechdel 19). It is quite likely that this had a pretty major effect on Bechdel in which she did not know how to express herself through affection, which lasted throughout most of her childhood. However, as she got older, she was able to partake in the more intimate forms of affection with her female partners. It is during her search for personal identity that she not only discovers her sexual orientation, but is able to engage in affectionate moments without feeling overtly awkward of …show more content…
It is no secret that when Alison Bechdel was a child, homosexuality was not exactly met with open arms. Due to the unpleasant views many heterosexuals had in regards to homosexuality, Alison Bechdel was at first quite cautious when it came to being open about her newfound sexual orientation; however, she eventually opened herself up to her family, friends, and the world about who she is and did not let the political prejudices of others stop her. This is evident when Bechdel writes, “It was in that tremulous state that I determined to tell my parents. Keeping it from them had started to seem ludicrous anyway” (76). Here, Bechdel decides to come out to her parents, deciding that it was absurd not to tell them. Evidently, the prejudices of society could not keep Alison Bechdel down, and this resulted in her personality being shaped by the courage of being oneself, which is hardly an easy thing to
- 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
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
On the surface, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home seems simply to be a memoir of her journey towards discovering her own identity, and in the process, uncovering her father’s. However, the novel is far more complex. The graphic novel is not linear in the least, and mimics memory as it moves backwards and forwards in time, or returns to specific situations repeatedly. This is layered with the numerous references to previous literary texts in an interesting manner; combined, it provides emotional and informative layers to the novel. Bechdel starts to especially question binaries and pushes the boundaries of what it means to be a female and male in a relatively patriarchal society with no middle ground around the rules; as the novel shows, this affects not only Bechdel’s own pursuit towards her identity but has a significant, and ultimately fatal, impact on her father, Bruce.
In Alison Bechdel 's Fun Home, there is a focus on a sculpted perception of gender roles produced by society and a great emphasis on how Bruce and Alison challenge these strict gender specific characteristics. Through Bruce’s femininity and Alison’s masculinity along with their homosexuality, they are able to go against the norms and the collection of rules set by society. It is also through their struggle with gender roles that one is able to understand their sexual orientation. Although Bruce and Alison seem fairly different from one another, there are elements that pull them closer together revealing their similarities.
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.
The autobiographical graphic novel “Fun Home,” by Alison Bechdel presents characters evolving to the reader in an intimate way. She reveals within her novel the high cost of claiming to be gay or lesbian within America. Instead of reading the author’s recollection of her experiences, her graphic novel connects the reader within the experience as the observer. This allows the reader to look at both the personality of the novelist and the developmental impacts that have shaped her. “Fun Home,” is a distinctively persuasive novel that is entangled within the lives of Alison’s family. While presenting to the reader the explanations of Bruce’s death, Alison endeavors to adjust to the reality of her father’s death by remembering family life at the “Fun House.”
In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, the author enlightens us with her struggles in determining her gender identity and sexuality. She does this in a very unique fashion. Alison, throughout the novel, uses specific pieces of literature and writing in order for the reader to decipher her true emotions and feelings toward her sexuality. On top of that, Bechdel writes her story in order to show how these objects play a much deeper role between not only comprehending her sexuality, but her understanding of her choppy relationship with her father. The end result is a series of connections that bring the two closer together than they ever were.
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.
Bechdel opens the book with a scene of her playing with her father. She uses this memory of them playing airplane (3) to describe the “normal” part of their relationship. This is contrasted by the frequent outbursts she describes throughout her childhood. In chapter 1 she uses the film It’s a Wonderful Life as an analogy. She draws a parallel between George’s rare outburst on his children to the frequent outburst her father displayed as she grew up (11). This scene gives clear insight on how the relationship with her father fluctuates between calm and strenuous. the inconsistences in their relationship leads her question what connects her to her father. This dilemma is best
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
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.
“Coming out” is a means of identifying one’s sexual orientation as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. At its most basic, “coming out of the closet,” means being honest with those around you—friends, family, colleagues, and so forth—about your sexual orientation, about whom you are. It also means acknowledging one’s sexual orientation to self. Such disclosure is an ongoing, lifelong process rather than a one-time event. New personal, social, and professional situations require gay men and lesbians to make decisions about the degree to which they can be open about their sexual orientation (Morrow, 1996).
-Working with Mary, I feel that one barrier that she is facing in regards to her expressing/accepting her sexual orientation and gender identity is fear of being rejected and shamed by her family. Evidence suggests that for LGBTQ young adults, a heightened level of
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.