As easy as it is to lose yourself in the plot of a good book, it seems as though you are always urged to take a step back, and look at the bigger picture. Whether you just finished a book, or made a mistake that caused your team to lose game, there is always some theme or lesson embedded in the aftermath to be discovered. It is usually the job of the participant to figure out exactly what that big takeaway is, and apply it to their daily lives. However the more invested you become in the thing itself, the more difficult it becomes to disconnect and realize these lessons. In Alison Bechdel’s Graphic Memoir, Fun Home, she tells the story of her childhood, and how she navigated the ins and outs of life as a queer woman, as well has her father’s untimely death, which she believes was self-inflicted. As a reader, I was amazed at how effective Bechdel was at casually discussing such controversial adult topics as queer identity, and suicide in a manner and style that we often associate with childhood play (Graphic Novels). It allowed for me to get so invested into the plot and the feelings that the characters were going through, that afterwards I found it extremely difficult to find the themes or lessons Bechdel could have wanted the reader to take away from the story. So I began thinking: what if there wasn’t a larger lesson for us? I believe that in her graphic memoir, Fun Home, Alison Bechdel actually didn’t leave a message for the readers to take away; instead, she merely provided insight on discovering one’s queer identity and suicide, thus allowing the reader to relate to her struggle from her perspective. She is able to create this sympathy within the reader allowing the them to relate to the more common aspects of her childhood, so that you can then at least attempt to sympathize with the less relatable feelings associated with her queerness, and interesting family history.
As mentioned before, the strategy Bechdel uses in her graphic memoir is to provide insight through sympathy she elicits in the reader. Initially, this sympathy is elicited by relating the reader to more common feelings that the character experiences, so that they can then sympathize with the less common ones. The first part of using more common life experiences is the simple part. Jennifer Lemberg offers an interesting insight into the science behind Bechdel’s uncanny ability to intertwine the reader’s emotions with those of her younger self. An important concept to understand that Bechdel appears to have mastered to enact this strategy is the relationship between pictures and dialogue. On this issue, she claims, “photographs prove difficult to decipher, while overidentification with literature by and about other people threatens to throw lives off course.” She continues, “By framing each of her chapters with words and images that bear a complex relationship to each other, Bechdel reminds us that it is in the space between existing visual images and familiar storylines where we make meaning of our individual lives.” In other words it is Bechdel’s word and picture choice combined that causes the feelings that further immerse the reader into the plot of the memoir, thus creating that sympathy. It is the discussions about Bechdel’s family vacations, playing with childhood friends, and writing in a diary that allow the reader to “make meaning of our individual lives” and connect with the protagonist/narrator. The consistency with which she alludes to these commonalities is what sets up the more challenging part for the reader to comprehend. the lesser understood problems that make Bechdel’s upbringing so unique: her queerness, and her father’s death.
When it comes to eliciting these same senses of sympathy and relatability surrounding her less relatable struggles, the author/character Bechdel is sure to compare her less comprehensible struggles to more relatable ones. When the character Bechdel returns home from college, she actually discusses her sexuality for the first time with her closeted father. She describes her feelings regarding the situation, stating, “I kept still, like he (her father) was a splendid deer I didn’t want to startle (220).” She then goes on to claim the conversation, “was more like fatherless Stephen and sonless Bloom… having their equivocal late-night cocoa at 7 Eccles Street (221).” The author Bechdel first compares the unwavering awkward silence in the conversation to the more common concept of not wanting to disturb a deer. She then compares the conversation as a whole to that of two fictitious characters, Stephen and Bloom in the book, Ulysses, alluding to the fact that they were able to harp on many similarities. Bechdel masterfully takes this uncomfortable, uncommon exchange, and uses more relatable sensations, and a literary allusion to create this aforementioned sympathy.
What’s important to notice in each of the many cases where she must use this strategy of sympathy to provide insight is that she never tries to make a lesson out of it. At the very most, she will reflect upon her own feelings, thoughts, and actions in hindsight. But she never appears to have this big message for the reader to take away and reflect upon. When reflecting on her father’s death, and whether or not she believes he was a “good father,” she says, “It’s true that he didn’t kill himself until I was nearly twenty. But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb (23).” Not only does Bechdel reflect on her feelings towards her father’s alleged suicide, but yet again, she manages to relate it to a more understandable concept regarding amputees. Her self-reflection allows for the insight she is providing the reader with to almost be analytical of itself, thus, making it more engaging for the reader.
In many works of art, it seems that there’s always a big lesson its creators leave for us to apply to our lives. But sometimes, there is a hidden beauty in appreciating the work for what it is, allowing yourself to almost let lost in it’s intricate details. In her graphic memoir, Fun Home, Alison Bechdel is able to create this exact sensation. By allowing the reader to buy into the plot, and the protagonist’s feelings, she is able to draw the reader into the complicated story. This then allows her to relate the reader to the character’s more relatable experiences, so that they can attempt to sympathize with the character Bechdel’s less relatable experiences regarding her queer identity, and her father’s unexpected suicide. While all this is happening, the reader is never expected to take a step back to reflect on some bigger lesson or concept. Due to this observation, I think it is safe to say that apart from insight on the struggles of her upbringing, Bechdel didn’t have anything she wanted us to take away from the graphic memoir. And with the state of the world we currently live in, perhaps this style of writing is a beneficial and more effective; especially when discussing such complex, and controversial topics.
Works Cited
-Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: a Family Tragicomic. Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
– Lemberg, Jennifer. “Closing the Gap in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, The Feminist Press, 2 June 2008, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/238093.
-Karr-Cornejo, Katherine. Rocky Mountain Review, vol. 68, no. 1, 2014, pp. 83–85. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24372799.
This essay asserts a strong, original thesis in the idea that Bechdel elicits sympathy as a way of generating insight, and you choose some evidence that actually demonstrates how she moves us from an emotional response to a more intellectual insight. But the essay doesn’t provide the evidence in the form of frames from the graphic novel, and as a result, the analysis doesn’t go far enough to show how fully the evidence supports your points. As always, you have a lucid, conversational, and engaging writing style, but cut clutter and generalizations so that you have more space for incisive analysis. (See Hypothesis comments, which detail what I’m talking about here.)