Fun Home By Alison Bechdel

Fun Home is the graphic memoir, that the Broadway musical that it was based on. You have your own musical playlist to listen to while reading. A graphic memoir, is an autobiography or semi-autobiography in the medium of comic book form. Fun Home, is a lot darker and more apparent with the harsher themes of abuse, and suicide. Fun Home, is about the famous cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s early childhood days and through her college days.

Nellie Bly was born May 5th, 1864 in a small town called Cochran Mills in Pennsylvania. Nellie’s real name is Elizabeth Cochrane. Nellie was a Journalist; she began her newspaper career at the age of 18. Nellie got her pseudonym from her editor, who refused to openly allow a female to write for his paper.

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohns quote highlights the basis of Debra Oswald’s play Gary’s house, and also Miroshav Holubs poem The Door. This essay will explore the notion that change causes people to shift their thinking and actions after significant catalysts. Gary’s House illustrates many of the issues and predicaments confronted by the characters and how their alteration in behaviour can have a beneficial outcome for them or others around them. The concept of "The Door" is based on the idea of taking risks and embracing change. The poet uses persuasive techniques to encourage and provoke the audience to take action.

Throughout the course of the book, A Long Way Home, Saroo Brierley, the author, encounters a series of traumatic experiences that lead to bittersweet moments. Unlike a normal child’s infancy, Saroo was physically and mentally consuming. Through his experience, we are able to get a glimpse of the many struggles and hardships young children live in India daily. His petrifying experiences of living on the streets, Liluah, and Nava Jeevan finally lead to his safe haven of being taken by the Brierley’s.

What does the word home mean? In the essay “On Going Home” by Didion she recreates her feelings and thoughts about her meaning of home. Family is a big part of one’s life and important one at that and Didion uses it as the center of her work. The work itself is about re- defining what home truly is.

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

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.

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

In Allison Bechdel's graphic memoir Fun Home, she uses a moment-to-moment transition to show the transition of her father asking her a personal, disturbing question to her response and reaction to the question. These two panels require little closure compared to other panels that Bechdel includes in her memoir, which is evident because of the small time gap between the question and the answer. While the transition between the two panels requires little closure with the scene itself, there is a lot of room for interpretation involving Allision's thoughts and reaction to her father's question. The scene itself is pretty obvious with what is happening with Allison and her father.

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.

However, her novel is more than just a book about a relationship between a parent and a child. The novel is in fact, more about an individual (her father) and the illusions he created to conceal who he really was. Bruce Bechdel, was a the heart of his being a homosexual man trying to live in a false reality

The book What She Left Behind by Tracy Bilen is about the main character Sara. In the begging Sara and her mom decide to leave her abusive father about a year after Sara’s brother committed suicide. Sara and her mom agree to meet after school at Dairy Treat but her mom never shows up, so Sara goes off with Alex to get a burger. When she gets home Sara’s dad says that her mom is on a business trip. In the middle of the story Sara and her best friend Zach continues to look for clues on what really happened to her mom.

In the story “Fly Away Home”, by Eve Bunting, Andrew does not want to get noticed, his dad tells not to and makes him do certain things not to get noticed, Also Andrew knows that if he gets noticed he will get moved out by security.

In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel explains her family, mostly herself and her father, Bruce. Bechdel explains her family by comparing them to mythology or the family from, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The movie, might seem like a perfect family by the title of it, but every family has their issues. When Bechdel starts talking about the movie it is just “Hello, Darling” and “Hello, Daddy,” conversation. The conversation is nothing like her family, since any kind of affection is not normal. What the movie is like her family is when Jimmy Stewarts comes home and starts yelling at everyone, her father would yell at them for little things they could not handle. Second way they are related is that the family in, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” buy and fix up their

Even though a lot of thing events that happened to Bechdel was sad, dark, or scary she manages to use a very witty tone throughout the story reflecting on her personality. She believes dark events are not central to one’s life. She uses this tone as oppose to an angry tone because she never realized her family was any different until she was compared it to others. This strongly classifies Bechdel in the optimistic category of personalities.