The entire novel explores the strange relationship between Alison and her father. The second half explores this relationship somewhat differently than the first. The use of literary reference begins from page one with the first mention of Icarus. How does the author’s use of literary reference inform your understanding of the story? Did you like how it ended with Icarus once more?
Furthermore, the second half contains the longer portion of
the narrative about Alison’s English classes and their discussions of his
favorite books. How does this interaction between “intellectual companions”
affect your understanding of their relationship? Think back to the moment when
Joan comes to visit and comments on how close she and her father are. Why does
the author spend so much time showing how close they could have been?
Emotional distance is a key theme in this narrative.
Repression and isolation form the ties of their family relationships. Yet, the
use of handwritten texts throughout the story tell us that they were still in
contact through this more removed from of communication. The diaries, as well, the
passages of highlighted text act as clues to the deeper relationships between
family members. How do these “illustrated” texts (that is they are shown in the
novel as handwritten letters or highlighted portions of printed text) inform
your grasp on the complex family relationships in the novel?
A comics medium is very intimate and personal in this
illustration style. Why do you think the author, who so obviously was very read
and interested in literature and included immense amounts of literary allusion,
choose to illustrate this narrative? How do you think you would have understood
the story if it were prose?
I read a review on Fun Home by Derik Badman and I feel that he said it all when he wrote;
ReplyDelete"Literary allusion, the influence of literature on life, and the influence of life on the interpretation of literature play a prominent role in the text. Alison shares her father’s interest in literature, and these literary elements provide a wealth of opportunities for enriching the narrative and the character analysis. At the beginning of the story the myth of Daedalus and Icarus is evoked, and both figures provide a lens for viewing the father: an artificer of surface and a fallen tragedy. As the story continues Camus (suicide), Fitzgerald (young love and wildness), Joyce (spiritual fathers a la Bloom/Dedalus), Colette (sensuality and the homosexual milieu), Proust (his two divergent and convergent paths), and others are intertwined into the narrative.
As far as comics go, Fun Home has a lot of textual narration. An unfortunate tendency in comics is to over-narrate, saturating the images with redundant blocks of text, but Bechdel shows her skill with the form by integrating the text and images in a way that avoids redundancy and complements each other beautifully. The narration provides context to an image, or often follows a thread parallel but supplemental to the images."
Badman, Derik. "Fun Home by Alison Bechdel." Quarterly Conversation RSS. The Quarterly Conversation, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.
The literary references definitely led me to believe that Alison is well read and I have no doubt that she is. While she never outright says it she seems like a very bookish person not for the sake of pleasing her father or college but simply that she likes to read. I admit that there were some things she mentioned that I didn’t quite get and undoubtedly I’m not as well read. And I think this plays into her trying to get across her relationship with her father. She is well read and so is he but despite having this in common or even reading the same materials they never quite connect. As for the use of Icarus I appreciated the mention of Icarus once more because by the end of the story it’s obvious how their relationship is as complicated and tragic as that of Icarus and Daedalus.
ReplyDeleteTheir relationship is far more formal than I’m used to seeing in parent-child relationships. They could never connect on a more intimate level but in this one area of intellects who share the same thoughts and reading is the only way they can be close. However her father does begin to dominate most of their discussions showing that there is a strong sense of loneliness in him that Alison can’t satiate on her own and causes this fragile connection to break. As with any family member who passes away I think in showing how close they could have been Alison expresses regret. Regret that she barely knew her father at all beyond his reading and obsession with decorating. And it also expresses the possibility of being connected on a much deeper level through homosexuality and all the struggles and prejudices it can entail.
The illustrated texts seem to imply that the relationships in the Bechdel family rely wholly on written far more than spoken word. Even further than that is their communication solely through art even though with this communication they are still considerably private about their thoughts and feelings. Without this types of communication and art surrounding them it is very little none of them would know how to connect at all.
During certain part of the story it is shown but not heavily focused on the fact that Alison does enjoy drawing and is her form of art to communicate through which likely played a huge role in why she decided to make a comic rather than a novel. Considering how much her father loved literature it would seem to make sense to tell his story through prose but then that was how he communicated and not Alison who is literature inclined but not so much as her father. But she may have also felt that the only way to properly convey her family and her life is through images rather than words. The intimacy of the comic medium is need simply for the sake of showing how her family was the opposite and certainly we understand them better this way.
The ending was absolutely perfect for the kind of story that Alison wrote. It was symbolism that even though he may have committed suicide because he was not willing to come out, he might have been proud of Alison for embracing her homosexuality. This is both positive and negative because it ends on the mystery of his suicidal. But it still ended perfectly.
ReplyDeleteThe illustrated texts explain that family relationships are not always what they appear to be, and that there is more meaning than just by what we see. The problem with society today is that we are used to seeing something that is so common that it is supposed to happen. And when something different occurs, we cannot see that as normal and discriminate against it. This shouldn't happen, but it does. If we read more books like this one, then we might become more tolerant of change.
ReplyDeleteI loved all the literary allusions in this novel. I found it amusing and enjoyable as well as enlightening and descriptive. Alison Bechdel informs us of her deep connection to literature that she shared with her father, and the way in which she is able to see her life as similar in certain aspects to those literary works. The ending especially was rather touching and powerful.
The author shows her relationship with her father as a somewhat professional relationship, with her father showing more respect for her intelligence, achievements, and sexuality, and not relating to her as his biological daughter so much. I think that maybe Alison was expressing her regrets and her wish to actually have been closer to her father. Or maybe Alison was even just trying to show the author how much she wished her father had been more loving to her. Furthermore, her relationship with her father is central to the plot of the novel, so it would seem that Alison is merely trying to convey her father's personality and relationship with her as well as she is able to in order to make the book more understandable.
I had never thought about the use of showing diary entries and letters like that. It does seem like Alison is trying to convey her family's communicative methods. I think maybe Alison uses these to show that their communication is still distanced. It seems that Alison and her father are closest through their letters to each other. When Alison returns from college and tries to talk to her father about their shared homosexuality, it does not go very well for her. But her father is more open to her through letters, showing that her family is more loving from a distance.
I think that the use of comics to tell this story was important because Alison wanted to be able to express this story on a whole other level. The use of imagery can help us see the actual house, the funeral home, and the city as well as some of the more powerful images, such as Alison's obsessive compulsive disorder and her father's grave. It also allows Alison to focus on the mere story and plot rather than the descriptive details.
I found the use of literary and cultural connections very interesting because Bechdel's father is painted as a disconnected person that seems to seek out escape. His escapes are often intellectual. Bechdel is obviously an intelligent person, which we come to understand was inspired by her father,. She and her father are connected by literature, so the references seem to be more for the audience to understand the importance of literature on their relationship.
ReplyDeleteBechdel seems to have wanted to get to know her father more because he died just as they were connecting as adults, intellectuals, and members of the LGBTQ community, whether out or not. She really liked connecting with him in the car on the way to the movie, but that was really the only time they had to talk about it. She wishes she had more of a chance. The use of text and drawn text really highlight again the importance of text and the written word, in letters and literature. Letters are used between the family members often because of the time period and also the lack of emotional attachment in the family, it seems. The image is important to this story in that it shows her physical transformation into a woman, her parents' unhappiness, and the actions of her family members. I think as prose the story would not be as interesting; seeing the family's compulsions and their lifestyle has a heavy impact on the reader.
I found the constant use of literary references to be very illuminating (even if I had to look a few up to get the full impact of the reference). The references give us a unique insight into Bechdel as well as her parents. They all had very deep-rooted insecurities and emotional issues, but none of them were able to communicate about said issues. They instead read and wrote about their emotions in order to better understand them.
ReplyDeleteThe moment where Bechdel pontificates about how close she and her father could have been is a prime example of the inability to communicate. Both her parents had been attempting to communicate (whether or not it was a conscious effort is debatable) through reading and literary discussion. But she regrets the fact that she never discussed sexuality with her father until shortly before his death. He had hinted his suspicions of her sexuality with a book, and she did the same, but it wasn't until she came out to him that they were finally able to connect.
The use of handwritten texts was another outgrowth of the omnipresent disconnect in this family. They could never muster the courage to speak their thoughts, but they could write in a way we don't often see. Although they occasionally went off on tangents, they were often able to write in a beautiful and soul-baring manner.
As for the final question, I find the balance between art and text to be a fascinating one. The frequent references to other literary works were intriguing, although I did sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed by them (and I had to look several up because I had not read the books in question). But I don't think she could have done this story as a traditional novel. Between the completely nonlinear nature of the story and the constant allusion to other works, there wouldn't be a way to do it without confusing the heck out of the reader.
I had mentioned this in an earlier post, but I think that Bechdal's use of literary references and examples does a successful job of framing the story through her own viewpoint. Basically, her vocabulary is directly influenced by the literary works that she references, and it does a good job of tying the character who exists "outside of the narrative" into the core narrative of the book itself. We see bits and pieces of her personality that exist off of the page leaking into the way that the story is told, and it helps us to better inform ourselves of Bechdal as an author.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that Alison's relationship with her father is so non-traditional (at least in terms of what we expect to see such a relationship to unfold like), but I think that it works very well for the story that's being told. More importantly, it feels *real.* Though a far-cry from Father Knows Best, the relationship depicted in Fun Home feels authentic, and it feels honest. And I think that's important in terms of making the dynamic between father and daughter work as well as it does here. There's not a lot of emotional connection, but you know, that's just how it is sometime. And it isn't "right" or "wrong," it's just how familial interactions sometimes play out. Sometimes life has loose threads. Allowing those threads to dangle feels more realistic than attempting to tie them off, and it works really here for the overall tone of the story.
I think that, no matter how excellent of a writer you may be, there are some things that just need to be shown. Images offer a level of objectivity that you don't always get with text. But it's an intimate objectivity. We can linger on the panels, really study every detail of the linework, the facial features, the background details. But it still is essentially what it is. There's no subjectivity in the description of the characters - they just are. And I think that too is very in line of the tone of the story. There's a very strong undercurrent that details with themes of acceptance, and in a way, the art is another method for offering that concept to the reader.
Alison Bechdel references many books as a way showing the reader where her ideas and beliefs stem from. Not only do we know what she read, but we know when she read it. What we read, for better or worse, has a huge impact on how we perceive the world. By revealing this insight of herself, the reader can deduce the logic that goes behind her beliefs. It like using quotes in research papers. These references to other forms of literature can be seen as support for her claims.
ReplyDeleteThe view of her father in this second half seems to take a dramatic turn. In the beginning, Alison paints a negative picture of her father, but by the end he almost seems like a hero to her. This shift could be for many different reasons. Believing that her father committed suicide could have caused her to harbor resents against him. It could also be due to a change of perception. When she was younger, her father may have seemed to be abusive and distant. However, as an adult, she saw him in a different light as a man who struggled with his sexuality like herself.
It hard to pin down the reason why Alison chose that medium of comics, but I believe it works to show the reader the details how she perceived them. For instance, even if she described her childhood home in extreme vivid detail, I would still end up with a different image in my head than the one she drew. By using this medium, the author can convey their perspective more effectively.
Bechdel is very clearly a supporter of the whole, "show, don't tell" writing philosophy. She very easily could have just told us, "I read so and so book at so and so time," but the fact that she SHOWS us the books and quotes from the books does a whole host of things for the reader. First off, it shows us that it was important. I'm sure, as she's clearly very inclined towards reading, that the books that she showed us weren't the only books she ever read. In showing us specific books that she read, we know that they impacted her. It makes it stick with the reader as they continue.
ReplyDeleteJust like Rob said, it shows us where she got parts of her worldview, so when the reader sees Alison making certain decisions, they'll often go, "Hm. This sounds an awful lot like something from that book she read earlier." It gives a callback to that part of the book.
The relationship with her father in the second half of the book really took me by surprise, but only at first. It's clearly just a journey of a maturing relationship. She was very resentful of her father when she was younger, but when she became an adult, they were more like peers. Looking at my own sister and the her relationship with our dad, it totally makes sense, and Alison depicted that beautifully. Kids think they're always right, and when their parents do something that is contrary to that, they get angry. But as the kids mature, so do their worldviews and their relationships with their parents. At least that's how it went in my family as my siblings and I grew up from being subjected to our parents (young) to closer to peer adults.
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