Essay Comparing Everything I Never Told You And Fun Home

An isolated community refers to a group of people with limited access to external ideas, resources, or physical space, which can, in turn, limit the amount of diversity present within the community. In the novels Everything I Never Told You and Fun Home, the authors write about communities that are isolated both socially and physically. Within this isolation, the novels contain themes about relationships that depict internal and external struggles as it relates to the surrounding space. The conflict that the characters in both novels encounter is similar as the setting for both novels is very similar itself. The primary setting in both novels is in their small town and within their own homes. Despite encountering different obstacles, this parallel of physical space between the two novels showcases the parallel between the emotional overtones the characters experience living in an isolated community.

In the novels Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel the towns in which the characters reside is limited physically by space while the households that characters belong to display emotional limitations. Restricted access to ideas and resources can translate into specific group dynamics, such as the development of in-groups and out-groups. An in-group refers to the dominant group of individuals and the out-group is the minority group and is categorically different. Such a dynamic can exist in the form of racial, sexual, or emotional differences. Integrating the concept of isolated communities with in-group-out-group dynamics develops a relationship between the two that suggests that limiting a community’s access allows for the development of exclusive group behaviors to develop. The authors of the novels Everything I Never Told You and Fun Home use space as a mechanism to portray the effects of isolated communities on issues regarding race, sexuality, and family