21 Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home

Image:  Clark, Chase E.  “Alison Bechdel at the Boston Book Festival.” Wikimedia Commons, 14 Oct. 2011, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alison_Bechdel_at_the_Boston_Book_Festival.jpg.  CCA 2.0

 

In This Chapter

 

Author Background

Alison Bechdel is an American cartoonist, author, and graphic memoirist known for her groundbreaking work in the world of comics. She was born on September 10, 1960, in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. Bechdel gained prominence through her long-running comic strip, “Dykes to Watch Out For,” which ran from 1983 to 2008. The comic strip featured a diverse cast of characters and explored a range of social and political issues, including feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and progressive politics.

Writing Career

Bechdel’s most renowned work is her graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, published in 2006. The memoir delves into her complex relationship with her father, her own coming-of-age, and her exploration of her sexuality. Fun Home received critical acclaim for its poignant storytelling, nuanced examination of family dynamics, and its exploration of themes such as identity, gender, and the complexity of personal narratives. It has been adapted into a successful Broadway musical.

Following the success of Fun Home, Bechdel published another graphic memoir titled Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama in 2012. In this work, she delves into her relationship with her mother and examines the connections between creativity, identity, and psychoanalysis.  She followed that with the graphic memoir The Secret to Superhuman Strength in 2021 in which she explores her lifelong fascination with fitness and exercise trends.

Image: Rowe, Josiah. “Alison Bechdel in London.”  Wikimedia Commons, 13 Aug. 2008, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alison_Bechdel_in_London.jpg, CCA-SA 2.0

Legacy

Bechdel’s work has had a profound impact on the comics industry, particularly in promoting LGBTQ+ representation and feminist perspectives. Her art and storytelling approach often combine humor, introspection, and social commentary. Bechdel’s work has been recognized with numerous awards and honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the “Genius Grant”) in 2014.

 

 

You can create an account, borrow, and read the full text of Fun Home for free using Internet Archive:

Fun home : Alison Bechdel : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

 

An Introduction to Fun Home

This graphic memoir is primarily about Alison’s relationship with her father, Bruce Bechdel.
Some critics dislike Bechdel’s use of pretentious language and exhaustive use of allusions, but others feel that she uses these allusions as a vehicle to explore relationships that, perhaps, she has no other way of understanding except through literary comparisons.
     What are you first impressions?

 

 

For Discussion

Chapter 1:
  1. Alison begins her first extended allusion on the very first page when she compares herself and her dad to Icarus and Daedalus.  Who are these characters and how is Bruce similar to each?
  2. Alison doesn’t like their mansion or her dad restoring it. Why is there so much emphasis on the house?
  3. How is the house itself, and her father’s attitude towards it, symbolic of their relationship?
  4. How do Alison’s complicated feelings about her father come out in this first chapter?  How would you describe their relationship?
  5. Stylistically, Bechdel uses a fine balance of narration, dialogue, and visual imagery to tell her story.  Which particular frames stood out to you as defining or important?
  6. How do these add to the story and help us understand Alison in ways that words alone wouldn’t?

Chapter 2:

  1.  What makes Fun Home a good title for this graphic novel (beyond just being an abbreviation for funeral home)?
  2. How does death loom over the entire book? The tone throughout is a bit somber, even if sometimes funny in a sarcastic way.  How does that contrast with the ironic title Fun Home?
  3. The second chapter title borrows from Albert Camus’s A Happy Death.  What does it mean? Why is her father’s death a happy one?
  4. How is Alison similar to her dad in their ability to suppress emotion (particularly in the death example)?
  5. We learn via illustration that Bruce never left the town he was born in.  How might this represent his own personal labyrinth?  What is Helen’s response to this lack of mobility?

Chapter 3:

  1. How does the word “queer” (in multiple connotations) come to define Bruce’s death?
  2. The book focuses on Alison’s relationship with her father.  How do her interactions with other family members (mother, brothers) appear in these chapters?  How are they similar or different?
  3. The image of Bruce’s library (60) is popular when googled.  What is the significance of this image in defining his character?  How about as his control center?  How does his illusion and reality intersect here?
  4. In the frame at the end of every chapter so far (and on the cover), there is a picture of Alison and Bruce.  In each, they are close, yet so far away from each other.  How does this represent Alison’s depiction of their relationship?
  5. How does Alison use literary allusions to make sense of her life?  Of her relationship with others?  Of her ability to distinguish between real and fiction?  She says, “my parents are more real to me in fictional terms” (67).  What does this mean?   (View the activity below titled “Literary Allusions in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home” to help keep track on these allusions.)
Chapter 4:
  1. In this chapter, Alison brings up flowers as a motif in several different ways.   First is her father’s gardening hobby:  What metaphors do Alison (or you) attach to this?
  2. Alison labels her father as a “sissy” in this chapter.  Why?
  3. Masculinity and femininity are often discussed as dichotomies.  Explain these in relation to the narrator’s experience.
  4. How do Alison and Bruce attempt to become what the other lacks and/or try to impress their own desires on each other?
  5. “In a way, you could say that my father’s end was my beginning.  Or more precisely, that the end of his lie coincided with the beginning of my truth” (117).  What does Alison mean here?
  6. On page 120, Alison compares images of her father and herself as a “translation.”  Unpack this.
Chapter 5:
  1. Tell me about Alison’s obsession-compulsive disorder. How does she use it to find control in her life?
  2. Alison keeps adding “I think” to every line in her journal.  Why do you think she does this?
  3. Alison likens her house to an artist’s colony.  How does her family flourish in creativity?  Why does it require isolation?
  4. What role does isolation play in her OCD habits?
  5. Do we see any lingering habits in her adult writing?

Chapter 6:

  1. Alison gets her period around the same time she starts putting excessive periods (ellipses) in her diary.  Coincidence?
  2. She also keeps pointing out lies in her diary.  Why does she lie to herself?  Are there specific things she lies about?  
  3. There’s quite a bit of interaction between Alison and her mother Helen in this chapter.  What is that relationship like? Any new dimensions that have developed through the novel?

Chapter 7:

  1. What is an anti-hero?  Why does Alison consider her father to be one?  Why does she consider herself to be one?
  2. Are you feeling any more sympathetic to Bruce now than you did at the beginning?  Why or why not?
  3. What does Alison mean when she says, “It was unusual, and we were close.  But not close enough” about her relationship with her father (p. 225)?
  4. Why does Alison write her life through only literary illusions and historical events?  (Even her diary is drowned in movies, books, and plays.)
  5. In college, Alison swears that she hates literary analysis/criticism.  How does this contradict what we know about the author?
  6. The use of framing is important throughout the memoir.  Some frames take up a whole page (like the fallen tree on page 178).  Others are distinct, like the conversation with her dad on pages 222-223.  Why do you think Alison used these particular layouts?
  7. Many frames throughout the text ironically include Sunbeam bread in the background (p. 21, 67, 96, 217).  Why do you think Alison intentionally added these details?
  8. What do visuals add to her story?  Why do they get more explicit/mature as she grows?
  9. How would this book be different if it was a narrative with no pictures? What does the genre add?  Consider this when writing your memoir.  (See the writing assignment at the end of this unit.)

 

You can view the quirky Broadway musical adaptation of Fun Home free on Vimeo:  https://vimeo.com/136654040

 

Stop and Reflect

  1. What does the Broadway adaptation add to Bechdel’s memoir?
  2. What details does it leave out?  Why?
  3. Which version of the story do you prefer?

Activity:   Literary Allusions in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home

As you read, fill in the guided chart with as many examples as you can find.

LITERARY CHARACTER OR TEXT HOW ALISON (OR A FAMILY MEMBER) RELATES TO THAT CHARACTER/TEXT PAGE NUMBER(S) TO SUPPORT YOUR INTERPRETATION
Daedalus  

·        Daedalus created wings for his son Icarus who flew too close to the sun – similar to both Alison and Bruce.

·       Daedalus designed the labyrinth to hold the minotaur – “a maze of passages and rooms opening endlessly into one another…escape was impossible.”  This is similar to the “home” created by Bruce that traps his family, especially Alison.

  

·       Pg. 12

·       Pg. 21
 
 

Click to fill in the chart using Microsoft Word:  Literary Allusions in Fun Home Chart

 

Sources

“Alison Bechdel.” Lambiek Comiclopedia.  https://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/bechdel.htm

Bechdel, Alison.  Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.  Internet Archive, 2006, https://archive.org/details/funhomefamilytra00bech_0

Bechdel, Alison. Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama. Houghton Mifflin, 2012.

Fun Home (Original Broadway Cast).  Vimeo,  uploaded by allthings heathers, 2015, https://vimeo.com/136654040

Teeman, Tim. “Alison Bechdel: The comic strip queen and author of ‘Fun Home’ on LGBT representation and the power of cartoons.” The Times, 17 June 2019.

Thurman, Judith.  “Drawn from Life.”  The New Yorker, 16 Apr. 2012.  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/23/drawn-from-life

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