Bechdel Essay The ideas of reading and writing seem intertwined, in order to do one of them you must be able to do the other. Which, makes both equally as powerful as the other in language and literature. Most authors who talk about the ideology of reading and writing, compose their works mainly based off of outside sources, mainly. However, author/comic writer Alison Bechdel composes a story about writing the story and the troubles and hardships she encountered while writing. This oddly more intricate story, though offers a deeper look into Bechdel’s personal life in which she explains her own thoughts as an omnipotent narrator. As the narrator of her own story – showing the character’s (herself) actual thoughts apart from dialogue – …show more content…
She accidentally blocked the easy way of confronting her about the memoir she’s writing about her father. So now she’s left with the only choice of climbing through a tiny window filled with dirt, cobwebs and spiders. As the dream continues, though she realizes there’s a large door behind her which leads to a body of water with stepping stones. She’s found what seems like an easy way out that even lays out the path for her. When she steps on the first rock, instead of being safe, she falls into the water. This symbolizes that there’s no real path to confronting her mother, she has to just dive into talking to her mother about what seems to be a touchy situation. So, dive in she did. Now instead of a basement, Bechdel is in her car when traffic starts to appear while she’s reciting what she wants to say to her mother. In the comic there are road work signs and shoulder closings which symbolize the bumpy path she’s about to encounter and how the road as she goes along it only gets narrower and more dangerous. This is when the story she writes of her father begins, but she soon realizes she cannot “live and write at the same time.” She holds a close encounter with death from a Stroehmann Sunbeam Bread truck – the same kind of truck her father jumped in front of in the attempt and success of suicide. When confronting her mother about the memoir of her father, Bechdel was still
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
Just like Sam and Willie, I still remember when growing up, the type of interest I had between reading and writing were distinct. I like reading short texts, magazines, the news paper, and even poems. However, when it comes to writing I could stay hours writing stories and often even filling up my note books writing down thoughts, quotes or ideas because of the joy that it brought in me. As it is mention in the article on page 317 on the second passage "-where there was much to be learned about adult worlds as well." This is a strong contrast with the Rodriguez and Freire's articles, they also mentioned similar point of views towards literacy as this one. Overall, reading open minds and eyes to see more than just what is being read but also
It therefore relates to Lejeune’s idea of the ‘autobiographical pact’ as deals with this concept of the ‘I’ through the voice of Alison. The autographic memoir focuses on her relationship with her father and can be read as a coming out memoir. This memoir contains a sense of autobiographical intimacy as the reader is taken on a journey through the experience of Alison and the truth behind this experience. Julia Watson in her article notes that Bechdel makes “visual connections between photos and memory images… past events, to genealogical legacy, to classical myths of artistic and erotic creation” in order to “interpret and rework the truth of events” (Watson 51-52). Thus, Bechdel abides by the rules of Lejeune’s autobiographical pact as she seals the contract of her identity with her real name at the front of the memoir. She depicts true events, illustrating her own visual world through memory and through these memories the reader is able to reveal her own version of the ‘self’. Through this genre of autography one can visually see the consciousness of Bechdel and her experiences come to life through the images. In her autographical memoir, Bechdel writes “our selves were all we had” (139) as she explores the isolation and detachment her family life existed of: “Our home was like an artists’ colony. We ate together, but
Throughout my years of schooling, I have become ambivalent about reading and writing. I have struggled in school to make myself enjoy writing. I didn’t mind reading as much, as long as it was to my interest. It has differed throughout the years I have been in school. Some years I have enjoyed both, reading and writing, and other years I have not liked either. Getting myself to enjoy reading and writing has been quite the adventure.
If I could describe my relationship with reading and writing it would most likely have to be, improving. Of course I would assume the same happens to all students that their reading and writing skills improve as they continue with their education. For me reading has been a passion, so my reading skills are pretty advanced and I can say I am able to read well. In my case, being a child of two Hispanic parents, I do have a slight accent that can get in the way and make my reading a bit rough. Usually it is not so bad, only on certain words that either I do not know how to properly pronounce or certain letters that my accent acts as a physical barrier where I have to sound it out more carefully or work around my accent. While that is the #1 major setback I have during reading. Even with that setback I can still say that I am confident in my reading skills, reading at a well speed, improving, reading various books all that combined allows to be able to read almost anything. What I do enjoy about reading is that I see it being able to bring myself into that world that the author is writing about or to envision the story they’re telling as a movie. I like the idea of just sitting back or laying down with a good book for hours and getting deep into whatever I am reading. Personally once I pick up a good book it is usually hard for me to put it down without the paranoia of not knowing how it ends will eat me up and I usually finish a book within a few days.
Writing varies from a text message to a novel. Writers often have a difficult task in creating a piece of work that truly identifies the meaning of good writing. Every good writer usually starts with the basics such as genre, audience, rhetorical situation, and reflection of the piece. Throughout this semester, we have gone through all of these key terms in great detail with each new assignment that has come our way. In doing this, not only as students but also as writers, we have come to create our own theory of writing. Every writer has a different theory of writing though most are very similar. Now, at this point in the semester after doing countless journals, in-class exercises, and final assignments, I think I have figured out my own
As a reader and writer I always faced given assignments with the intent of doing exceptional jobs and take a sense of pride in my work to complete my tasks. As a reader, I will bore myself through out an entire book and realize I didn 't understand a single thing. Although as a writer, I can go on for so long losing myself on a topic because it feels more interactive. Reflecting on my experiences as a reader and writer have been very bold, I never really found a joy or an interest to become the exceptional student who stands out amongst others because, I always felt ok with myself and my results with the way I did things.
Reading and writing have many connections when it comes to everyday life and school. Students would do better with by both reading and writing being taught together instead of separately rather than being taught as two separate lessons. The article lists and discuss multiple ways for teachers to integrate both reading and writing into their lessons. The article The Reading and Writing connection: Merging Two Reciprocal Content Areas discuss the connection of reading and writing. It also discusses the integration of the two can help struggling readers as well.
I wouldn’t say that I am a good writer, and I really don’t like to read books either. Through my years in school I became literate in these two categories. I was and still am not interested in writing, or reading books in my spare time. The only writing I have ever done is for school. Writing just does not interest me, and the only reading I do out of class is reading about sports in magazines, or reading the news, or looking at web pages. I have only read a couple of books on my own, 95% of all the books I have read have been for school. The reason for not writing out of class is probably attributed to the fact that I am a very impatient person, and I have a short attention span. I have no interest in writing and reading so when
She accidentally blocked the easy way of confronting her about the memoir she’s writing about her father. So now she’s left with the only choice of climbing through a tiny window filled with dirt, cobwebs and spiders. As the dream continues though she realizes there’s a large door behind her which leads to a body of water with stepping stones. She’s found what seems like an easier way out that even lays out the path for her. When she steps on the first rock, instead of being safe, she falls into the water. This symbolizing that there’s no real path to confronting her mother, she has to just dive into talking to her mother about what seems to be a touchy situation. So, dive in she did. Now instead of a basement, Bechdel is in her car when traffic starts to appear while she’s reciting what she wants to say to her mother. In the comic there are road work signs and shoulder closing which symbolize the bumpy path she’s about to encounter and how the road as she goes along it only gets narrower and more dangerous. This is when the story she writes of her father begins but she soon realizes she cannot “live and write at the same time.” She holds a close encounter with death from a Stroehmann Sunbeam Bread truck – the same kind of truck her father jumped in front of in the attempt and success of suicide. When confronting her mother about the memoir on her father, Bechdel was still writing about
Reader, I begin my tale of woe and despair whilst sitting on the streets of London, watching the commuters pass by. The day is cold, darkened by a drizzling yellow fog and the sky grey like milky porridge. I dig around in my pocket for a minute before dragging out a cigar and lighter, taking a deep drag and inhaling the warm smoke. My existence has been a tormented one, filled with despair and sorrow, and in my last days of sanity, I hope to share it with you, Reader. Sighing, I lay back against the building wall and with eyelids heavy, I doze off.
Okay, so clearly this kid has no idea what MLA format is. I don’t get it. Did he even look at the rubric? It’s there for a reason. I stretched my arms out behind me and blinked my eyes hard, trying to re-wet them. This assignment was turning into the bane of my existence, and I was only two paragraphs deep. I had made a deal with myself, no more than four hours of grading on the weekends. So much for that. I looked across my desk at the pen holder/old mug and grabbed a new red pen. My current one was only half full of ink and this short story was going to need a novels share of red. I started marking away, and soon the page was thoroughly doused in red ink. Capitalize here…comma splice…indent...that is not how you spell clique. We were in
Every piece of writing starts from an idea of another piece of writing that has already been written. Writers from the past, present, and even future can all thank one another for their great ideas and inspiration to write. Each piece of writing is either history or history in the making. History last forever, and the reason that people have knowledge about the past is because of writes documentation. Without old writings, one would not have valuable information about how people lived hundreds of years ago, how people acted, as well as how America was run as a country. Therefore, writings from 400 years ago, to even 2016 have not only informed one about history, but also shaped the way Americans live their lives to this day.
Writing has always been something I dread. It’s weird because I love talking and telling stories, but the moment I have to write it all down on paper, I become frantic. It’s almost as if a horse race just begun in my mind, with hundreds of horses, or words, running through my mind, unable to place them in chronological order. Because I struggle to form satisfying sentence structure, it takes me hours, sometimes even days, to write one paper. It’s not that I think I’m a “bad writer,” I just get discouraged easily. Needless to say, I don’t think highly of my writing skills. When I was little I loved to both read and write. I read just about any book I could get my hands on, and my journal was my go to for my daily adventures. Although it’s
I like that, although our course is about content area reading, it also covers writing, another important literacy skill. I believe that reading and writing should go hand in hand. Reading can enhance writing and vice versa. I understand that some teachers consider reading first before writing because of interpreting reading as a tool to access knowledge and writing as a tool to demonstrate that knowledge. However, to me, which skill should come first is not as important as the fact that without one, the other cannot exist.