Fun Home Book Analysis

Fun Home is an autobiography encompassing Alison Bechdel and her father’s sexuality through their struggled relationship. Throughout the story, Bechdel refers back to her childhood memories and incorporates the hindsight ideas she continually made while growing up. The use of comic images creates a deeper context of the author’s viewpoint for each scene which helps exemplify the themes of sexuality, literature, and exploration. Bechdel contrasts the opposing gender roles to the sexual similarities she shared with her father. The use of the quote, “where he fell short, I stepped in,” eloquently uses the interpretation as a method of showcasing their blended traits (Bechdel 96). By her father expressing feminine traits, she could see

Her father was seen reading The Great Gatsby which alludes to the theme of desiring something that one cannot have (Bechdel 61). By showing her father reading this book, Bechdel alludes to the point that her father, like Gatsby, was a mystery and hid behind secret identities, but the books he read gave insight into his feelings of sexual tension. While books were a suppression for her father, Alison found that books helped express her sexuality. Every major event in the novel revolves around books, such as Bechdel’s first relationship with Joan. The couple was shown in a bed “strewn with books” and were reading books even while being intimate (Bechdel 80-81). The books Alison is reading influence her sexuality and give her a new mindset about what she is going through. This new mindset allows her to be more courageous compared to her father who had to hide his

Each image conveys a very specific emotion that is carried throughout the chapter and the novel as a whole, such as the scene of Alison and Joan in bed with various books, which evokes themes of intimacy. In another example, Bechdel wants the reader to see that the simple drawings reflect the way Alison and her father are visually connected to each other. In each scene in which they are trying to connect emotionally, they are drawn similarly in their haircuts, in a side view perspective, and in their facial expressions (Bechdel 204, 220). They are drawn similarly here because Bechdel is emphasizing their common sexuality. The use of both images and commentary allows the scenes to connect in a way that Bechdel shows the characters