Themes Of Identity In A Separate Peace And Fun Home

A Separate Peace by John Knowles and Fun Home, a musical by Lisa Kron, both exhibit themes of identity. In A Separate Peace, the narrator, Gene Forrester, is looking 16 years back at his past when he attended the Devon School during World War II. In the story, Gene is dependent on his friend and roommate, Finny. The story starts during the summer of 1942, where Gene and Finny are attending the summer session at Devon. Knowles writes about Gene’s jealousy of Finny, as he manages to seem perfect. It is revealed that his envy evolves into the desire to become Finny. Throughout the book, the two boys’ relationship is examined as Gene adopts Finny’s being. In the musical Fun Home, Alison Bechdel is looking back at her life since childhood while

There is a scene in the musical where Alison is looking back at herself and her father, Bruce, getting ready for a party. Alison complains that she hates the dress she is in and asks why she can’t wear pants. Bruce manipulates her into wearing the dress, saying that people will talk about her behind her back and she’ll be an outcast because she is the only girl not wearing a dress. During the number, Maps, Alison begs herself to forget all of the things her father told her and to focus on what she could see and knew to be true. She sings in the first number, “Just like you, am I just like you?” as she reflects on the fact that she and Bruce both sing the same line many times: “I want to know what’s true, dig deep into who and what and why and when, until now gives way to then.” Alison’s mind is tuned to be like her father, although she doesn’t want to be. While Alison is at college, she realizes she is a lesbian and comes out to her family. She receives a letter from her father telling her that she shouldn’t be so quick to put a label on herself. This frustrates Alison as she remarks, “He has to be the expert. Lots of wisdom and advice about things he doesn’t know anything about! I’m gay. Which means I’m not like him and I’ve never been like him, and he can’t deal with that…he can’t deal with me…and he never could” Soon after she receives this letter, her mother explains to her

Bruce sees Alison being a separate person than he was. He watches as she enters a relationship and begins to make a life for herself, and it destroys him inside to know it’s not him living that life. When adult Alison looks back at how her father dealt with things when she had come out, she realized that she hadn’t been paying attention as to how it was affecting him. “I had no way of knowing that my beginning would be your end!” (Kron, 52). Alison feels she is responsible for Bruce’s death. During the song Telephone Wire, adult Alison cries out: “There’s a moment I’m forgetting where you tell me you see me,” Alison desperately wants for her father to recognize that she is not him, though they are the same in many ways. After the death of her father, Alison is attempting to understand why he killed himself. “What did it feel like to see it coming and not move? And just let it hit you? Was it because of me? Did it have nothing to do with me? What happened?” (Kron, 63) Finally Alison is able to disconnect from her father and realize she is not him, and is able to accept this in the final number Flying Away, “Every so often there was a rare moment of perfect balance, when I soared above