Fun Home Alison Bechdel Essay

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

Sexuality and Redefining Societal Norms Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is a tragicomic that portrays characters with differing styles of dealing with their own sexuality. Everything about the novel, from the manner in which it is told, to the character development of Alison and her father Bruce, is a unique way of discovering one’s self and the effect the outside world has on this discovery. Both Alison and her father struggle with coming into their own identities. A further complication

The Dualistic Narrative in Fun Home Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home uses intellectually developed language against cartoon images that are comparatively minimal to convey what her life was like as a child and young adult as she coped with her father’s suicide. By using both of these narrative forms, Bechdel essentially gives herself two different voices in the novel: her childhood self who is the main character of the book and her current self who is the author. This is meaningful because since the novel

theme is returning home (Nostos), However, he enjoys the journey back more than his own comfort. Odysseus is informed by Kalypso about “many more sorrows that fate require[d] [him] to endure”(Odyssey 5. 192) ; it would not be an easy way home. Odysseus had thought that returning home would fulfill his desire, that this Imagery would fulfil his unconscious desire. A “troubling gap” was created between the signifier and the signified. Odysseus’s signifer was wanting to return home, nevertheless, the

Alison Bechdel is a cartoonist responsible for the 25-year-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, her two widely acclaimed graphic novels, and the origination for the internationally-known Bechdel Test. In addition to this, she has my boundless love and admiration. Fun Home, her graphic memoir she proclaimed as “a family tragicomic,” spent two weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, was named Time Magazine’s number one book of the year 2006, and was recently adapted into a Broadway musical

Connection Much of Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home is focused on the relationship between Alison and her father. Due to this, the relationship between Alison and her mother is often pushed to the sidelines. Although it may seem that their relationship doesn’t play a main role simply because of the focus of the story, it becomes increasingly obvious as the novel goes on that Alison and her mother don’t have much in the way of a relationship or connection. While at the forefront Alison explores the

Linda Ray English 230 Instructor: Dr. Hernandez Date: November 6, 2016 Fun House, Not So Fun 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

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. He was the glue that held the whole dysfunctional family together and it was his mysterious and depraved manner that compelled

as a father and craftsmen, sends his son and apprentice to certain danger. Alison Bechdel recognizes this pattern, and its appearance in this myth, and uses Icarus as a metaphor for her own relationship with her father. Bechdel, in her graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, utilizes the theme of selfish inventor parent and obedient

is "differing in some odd way from what is usual or normal" ("Definition of Queer"). By this definition, all humans are queer in their own way. When looking at the novel Middlesex, written by Jeffery Eugenides, and the graphic novel Fun Home, written by Alison Bechdel, queerness is seen in multiple aspects within the characters and styles of writing. Eugenides writes Middlesex through the all-knowing character of Cal, who was born and raised a female but later discovered to have both male and female