Fun Home And Sylvia Plath's Daddy

Thousands of Americans live in solitary confinement. This punishment, considered the worst form of imprisonment the American government subjects prisoners to, often drives prisoners mad due to the lack of communication. However, people often ignore the effects of emotional detachment or silence outside of incarceration, especially when carried out by a family member. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath represent two outcomes, acceptance and unresolved resentment, that may befall a daughter isolated from her father’s affection and approval, foreshadowing the outcome of their lives. These two women’s journeys of grief concluded differently because, unlike Sylvia Plath’s speaker, Alison Bechdel obtained an individuality that

The speaker’s suicide attempts because of her rejection of the life she lived were noticeable by the signs leading up to them. She clearly exhibited emotional instability. One can see this through her writings, including “Daddy,” leading up to her suicide attempts. She hates the doctors that “put her back together” (Plath l. 62) after her attempt because she couldn’t see the opportunities a writer as capable as herself could embrace in the future. Her lack of resolution of the resentment she held so tightly was foreseen by the fact that she could never talk to her father again after the age of ten, and the fact that her coping through writing and her husband proved no help. She explains she chose her husband because he reflected her father, “a man in black with a Meinkampf look” (Plath l. 65). This description compares her father, husband, and Hitler all at once. Previously, she claims, “every woman adores a fascist” (Plath l. 48) and “I thought every German was you” (Plath l. 29). These three lines reveal a much deeper psychological problem. She cannot find a distinction between her father and other men. The abandonment permeated her down to her core and seeps into every aspect of her life. This inability to separate one tragedy from the rest of her life result from her lack of autonomy. Later, she labels her husband a vampire (Plath l. 72), and they divorce. She feels

Her opportunity to grow up with her father gets reneged when he dies unexpectedly, causing an unresolved, incomplete childhood. The speaker cannot psychologically move past a childlike state of mind where she calls her father Daddy (Plath l. 6, 51,68, 75, 80). The more her words become angry and emotionally charged, the more she refers to him by this nickname of endearment, signifying a dependence on him. Her vision of a reunion comes through as she explains, “At twenty I tried to die/ And get back, back, back to you/ I thought even the bones would do” (Plath l. 58-60). Just like a child upset with their parent and waiting for them to make it better, Sylvia Plath’s speaker finds herself upset and hoping if she can reunite with her father, the situation will improve. Eventually, she decides she exists as the antithesis of her father because if she cannot reflect him, which she clearly desires, she must embody the epitome of what he hates in order to spite him. She designates herself a Jew (Plath l. 34, 35, 40) to offset his German and Hitler-esque qualities (Plath l. 29, 44, 45, 48, 65). Yet, her decision to live as her own person, not based on her own desires, but on the antithesis of what her father would want, displays her emotional dependence on him even more