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Identity In Alison Bechdel's Fun Home

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The knowledge of exploring who you are as male or female represents the ability to comprehend our identity and become part of society’s standards. Gender is a social constructed characteristic interviewed with cultural views and behaviors ruled by context. Because gender is ruled by society’s standards it has become a negative developmental issue for those who do not fit into gender expectations. Repressive hostility upon identity is a central theme discussed in Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. By using graphic illustrations the author shows in a intimate medium her childhood memories so readers can empathize with her memoir easily. The book gives insight of how identity can be overshadowed by shame and self-destructive habits if individuals opt …show more content…

Bruce Bechdel, as the pioneer of their family’s façade, strived to have neatness and perfection in their lives so his gender struggle would not shine through his attempt to be a perfect man. Because he forced his family into a fictional life, literature became an escape from reality and the only intimate bond Alison and Bruce Bechdel developed as father and daughter. “My diary was rapidly becoming as onerous as the rest of my life” (Bechdel 142). Literature not only became indispensable in Alison’s life but, it was an open door to understand his father death and her problematic childhood. Reading and engaging with books is presented as a way to transmit repressed ideas and desires that would not be said in real life. Bruce Bechdel used the power of literature to throw himself into different roles as a way to free his mind from gender expectations, "But in a way Gatsby’s pristine books and my father’s worn ones signify the same thing – the preference of a fiction to reality” (Bechdel 85). Because Bruce Bechdel strived to overshadow his homosexuality, he engaged in a life full of lies and artifice as the character from The Great Gatsby. Bruce Bechdel wanted to show a perfect life with an outstanding family but, in reality, he was a repressed homosexual man. His compulsive habits not only affected the family’s dynamic but …show more content…

But, if these experiences overshadow the feeling of acceptance how can individual fit into society standards? Fun home opens a controversial discussion about homosexuality and how people overshadow their identities if they do not have a constant nurturing support to overcome their fear and loneliness. Alison Bechdel demonstrates two sides of sexual exploration, Bruce Bechdel as the hidden disruption against interpersonal relationships and Alison as the openness of sexual discovery through literature and empathy. Indeed, Gender identity is one factor that contempt human beings to belong into a category in society because we are driven by emotions and fears. Having a purpose in life can define who we are and the actions we commit in life and if we are not capable to find our own identity, we tend to hide ourselves behind compulsive habits that end in negative consequences as Bruce Bechdel

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In this essay I will touch on what intrigues me about Alison Bechdel’s creative and powerful art in Fun Home. Specifically this essay will look at a couple of pages that include her most interesting panels in the whole book. I compare the panels to others and discuss the feelings I have toward her choice of drawings and dialogue. By looking closely at and analyzing her artwork, I will show how Bechdel arouses curiosity with only two pages. First I will discuss a few panels on pages 220 and 221 that include Alison talking to her father after she has returned from college.

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Analytical Summary “Are We Worried About Storms Identify or Our Own” by Patricia j Williams uses the child’s gender complexity issues of the parent’s decision not to release the gender once born to ask a philosophical question to people who feel that they must know a person’s gender. Patricia j Williams feels that the label of a gender should not be a crucial issue in the world that we live in today. She feels that the world should become less gender oriented in todays world. People talk all the time about how we should not categorize by gender, but as soon as someone attempts to erase gender ideals the world goes into an uproar.

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Society tries to create a “perfect” image on people; leading us to believe that if we are not the specific way that we created, we do not fit in. In reality everybody is supposed to create themself, regardless of what society believes. Does what we label others matter? Who are we to judge how others chose to create themselves? In David Crabb’s memoir Bad Kid, Crabb takes the readers through what it was like discovering that he is gay, and how that changed how kids treated him during school.

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To understand the linkage between sexuality and gender, it is important to reimagine the relationship between sexuality and gender and the rapport they hold with self-identification. Not long ago, sexuality was tied to procreation - becoming the core of one’s identity. Gender had always been tied to biological sex. However, a crisis of gender identity emerged and blurred the gender and sexuality binaries that had become commonplace social facts. A fluidity was created that allowed individuals to not feel the pressure of fitting inside distinct identification categories.

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In the graphic novel Fun Home, author Alison Bechdel recounts memories of her childhood, while contemplating lies and deception of her father and how his life impacted her own sexual orientation. Late in the novel, Bechdel details the afternoon during which she realized she was a lesbian, coincidentally coinciding with the day she signed up to take a class about her father’s favorite novel of all time. Bechdel draws herself in a bookstore, reading a copy of Word is Out, and placed in the frame with her is the shadow of a man who is drawn exactly the way Bechdel previously drew Roy, the Bechdel’s babysitter and yardwork assistant who was sleeping with Bruce Bechdel (Bechdel, 203). Knowing that the author draws everything for a reason, what does

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Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home, illustrates and depicts her unique upbringing. Her life story is told through her own illustrations, showing her internal conflict with who she is, as well as struggling to understand her father’s death. This unconventional way Bechdel chose to express her story positively affects the reader's comprehension of the novel. Being able to clearly see the situations creates more feelings of empathy towards the characters, and deeper connections are made. Reading about a situation, and actually seeing it are two very different things.

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In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel uses images of her father’s distant relationship and obsessive behaviors which lead to the repression of her identity. Bruce, her father, represses his entire family with his obsession with perfection in his life, beginning with the renovation of their gothic home. Within that home, there is rigidity in keeping their home in a perfect state at the cost of Alison and her siblings’ freedom. When Bruce begins to fall apart, he begins to push his obsessive behaviors onto his daughter, restricting her expression of dress and identity. In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel showcases her father’s denial of his femininity as an explanation for living vicariously through his daughter, in ways that he cannot himself.

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Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” is an enthralling memoir about a young girl’s peculiar childhood, which involved her family’s funeral business, infatuating trips, family turmoil, solitude, and her befuddling relationship with her masterful artificer of a father; in which similarities ranged from obsessive compulsive disorders and literature to sexuality. The most profound being homosexuality. Bechdel utilized duo-specific, speech bubbles, as well as, subject-to-subject paneling to illustrate the complex father-daughter relationship where Alison and Bruce Bechdel perpetually attempted to compensate for each other’s eccentric gender behaviors. Initially, both Bechdals yearned for different genders, imposing expected behaviors upon the other.

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While Jay Gatsby had an astounding lack of friends, Bruce Bechdel has an absence of a loving family. Through his deceit with his wife, rage fueled fights and cold atmosphere it has a huge impact on their children’s lives. This unhappiness that manifested itself in Bruce, and showed itself as a cold exterior and a menacing presence in their house. One question arises from both Gatsby and Bruce Bechdel: how is it, that the both of these two men were able to so thoroughly and absolutely deceive themselves. These are two stories of two emotionally absent men, and their astoundingly elaborate and fully operational illusions of a life, the hurtful effects that these chimeras had on the people that surrounded them, and their struggle with a tenuous grasp of reality that they fight to maintain underneath the veil of their counterfeit

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This is evidence that describes how living in a bad environment is what can make a person have a negative identity or to act a certain way. Furthermore, your personal identity is very important and at times may not be up to you to create, but your life and your success heavily relies on it. Whether or not you will have a good job and life ahead can depend on your identity because your perspective and views are what guide you to do things. An example of identity leading to success in a person’s life is Bill Gates who is the richest man in the world. Bill Gates did not grow up in a bad environment, he didn’t do drugs and illegal things and was instead very determined.

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Many people have difficult relationships with family members but few are as explicit and ironic as Alison Bechdel’s relationship with her father. In her memoir Fun Home, Alison writes of how her homosexual father, in an effort to hide his sexuality, diverts attention from his family to his reputation. Alison Bechdel explains how her father’s obsession with perfection failed their father-daughter relationship using her experiences with literature, visual representation where words fail her and thoughtful reflection on her father’s shortcomings. Her using these literary methods to describe her father show the reader how she has overcome her upbringing and brought clarity to herself after her father’s death and how others can do the same. Fiction gives readers the ability to connect with characters as they develop and grow throughout their story.

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Chad Blenz Deniz Perin ENG 121 08 December 2014 Published in 2006, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a graphic memoir that brought great success to Alison Bechdel and her work. Fun Home explores the relationship between Alison and her homosexual father, Bruce Bechdel, to shed light on ideas such as gender, coming out with your sexuality, and the complex dynamics within their family. With further analysis we can see that these key ideas are facilitated through discussions of death, life, and literature–provoked by Alison’s efforts to illustrate a truthful portrait of her complicated connection with her father, specifically after he commits suicide. Alison Bechdel is not only the main author and narrator but also the main protagonist through out the graphic memoir.

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