Fun Home's Experimental Form

Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home depicts her life through cartoons, using both words and pictures to convey her story. Through this work, form becomes as interesting and important as content. Bechdel’s work is unlike any other that I have ever read. While Bechdel is certainly not the first to tell as a story using words and pictures, in a comic-book-style, the subject of her work is far from typical when looking at such a form. When I think of comics, I tend to think of superheroes, or fictional characters. However, Bechdel tells the story of her life, specifically during her childhood, and with regard to her relationship with her father, through this text. Bechdel’s recollection is not a simple, easy to read tale. It is not, as one would initially assume, told in a “PG” way, even though, in a sense, it is a ‘picture book.’ Bechdel instead touches on very graphic, and at times disturbing, occasions. She deals with topics of death and suicide, of sex and the act of ‘coming out’ to one’s family as a homosexual, and many other personal, and mature topics. By choosing to discuss such topics in this form, rather than through a traditional narrative, Bechdel is very experimental with her work. She departs from the conventions of the genre of the memoir, as well as from the traditional comic book. This literary move adds to the reader’s understanding of her story, and subsequently of her life. Lines and pictures powerfully surprise the reader quite frequently, adding an element of suspense to the work. Thus, the tale is not predictable, or conventional in any way. This is much like Bechdel’s life, which in many ways goes against cultural norms. The novel employs irony in many ways, such as through the title and the fact that a place that deals so much with death is called a “fun home.” What the reader expects going in is, time and time again, turned upside-down. Throughout the work, Bechdel is able to tell and show her own story in a very compelling way. She brings up themes of loneliness, isolation, time, and one’s ability to adapt, cope, and change, which have made appearances in many of the works we have read thus far in class in a very different way through this experimental work, which in itself has faced several challenges upon publication, much as Bechdel has faced throughout her life.

Time Until

Something interesting that I observed when I went to service recently was the way that the children view time in relation to their behavior. I noted that my teacher, Ms. Lance, frequently let the children know about time by stating it as “if we spend time doing X we won’t have as much time for Y.” In this way, she was telling time not based on hours and minutes, but based on how the time was being used. For example, it did not matter if Friday Social, during which time the kids get to watch a video, was supposed to begin at exactly 2pm. If the clock struck 2pm and the kids were not finished with their math activity because they had not been following directions, the transition to Friday Social would not begin. Just because it was 2pm and Friday Social began at 2pm did not mean that the time would start to be used for what Ms. Lance had planned to use it for. In this way, the kids seemed to understand their role in the passage of time as relating to their behavior. If they behaved and followed instructions, and were thus able to complete their math activity, they would be able to start Friday Social on time and have the full time that they were supposed to have for the video. If they chose to use their math activity time incorrectly, they would lose time to do something else. Another way Ms. Lance measured time was by telling it as “time until.” So she would tell the kids they had 2 minutes until it was time for social studies, which told the kids that they had 2 more minutes to use their time wisely before they ran out of time and had to leave the previous activity unfinished. I found the “time until” particularly interesting because, obviously when you’re in school, you have to be very aware of time, because teachers schedule chunks of time for different purposes. The kids, though, don’t need to be able to tell time conventionally (on a clock) in order to be participants in time and learn how to use their time effectively and not waste time. By telling time as “time until” or “time spent on X is time lost for Y,” kids learn to conceptualize how they use time and how they participate in time without necessarily even knowing what time it is.

I noticed this alternate kind of participation in time when I was reading Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. Ms. Lance told in terms of “time until” and Bechdel does a similar thing when she is talking about her father. In the classroom, the kids spend all day anticipating Friday Social, which they know is coming, and they know when it is coming (after math, science, and reading time). From the beginning of Fun Home, we know that Bechdel’s father commits suicide. We also know when he does it, Bechdel describes “he didn’t kill himself until I was nearly twenty” (Bechdel 23). The story begins in Bechdel’s childhood and takes frequent sojourns into the past, when she was born and before she was born, in an out-of-order timeline. The entire time, the reader knows that her father’s suicide is coming, and they know where in her ordered-time it is coming (just before her twentieth birthday) but they must wade through the entire book waiting for it. This brings the reader a sense of urgency, because they know that the suicide is the crux of the memoir but they do not know what it will be like when Bechdel introduces it. Just the way math games engaged the first graders enough that they forgot about Friday social for a little while, the reader forgets about living in this “time until” when they become absorbed from stories from Bechdel’s childhood told in her compelling style. Then, just as the sense of urgency to get to Friday Social doubles when Ms. Lance’s alarm goes off and it is time to transition, the reader is reminded of the impending suicide through different (sometimes subtle) references in the book. These references remind the reader that what the characters are experiencing is temporary, and that all of the memories Bechdel is conveying to us have been colored by this experience with suicide. This makes living in the “time until” feel complicated; we know that it is a “time until” and the author knows this too, but the actual characters in the story don’t know this. It presents a different setup than in the classroom, when the kids know they are in a “time until” and so does the teacher. The teacher never forgets the “time until” just as Bechdel never forgets, but the reader, taking the role of the student, forgets and remembers with reminders or absorbing stories. It makes time pass in a different and strange way, sometimes making us want to speed through it with urgency, other times making us want to savor what we have because we know it will all change.

Fun Home and Retrospective Time

The narrative of Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home unfolds from many different points of orientation.  It is retrospective, with the speaker looking back on her father from the future point of his death.  However, within that timeline, the structure shifts between various perspectives. We move from Bechdel’s childhood to her father’s death, to her parent’s youth, to childhood once again, and the cycle continues in changing forms.  The timeline is linear in its realism, in that, as it is an autobiographical account of the author’s father, nothing truly happens out of place. Yet, the narrative is convoluted in its retelling. With the inherent retrospective storytelling, everything can happen at once simply because everything has already happened in the past.  Bechdel’s father is both alive and dead, and Bechdel herself is both adult and child. As a result of this, the past and future inform each other in ways that they would not during the actual present experience of an event. The future (or the newfound knowledge of the past, as seen at the moment of Bechdel’s discovery of her father’s relationships with men) colors past events in a light that forms an inextricable link between the various periods of time.

This simultaneous yet separate time is mirrored in the very structure of the graphic novel form.  The story is told through a series of boxes, the white spaces between denoting the movement of time.  Yet, the images themselves are stuck in it. It is impossible for them to move - each a snapshot, not unlike the ones frequently illustrated throughout the book.

The Workings of Human Memory

Fun Home and A Brown Girl Dreaming both deal with retrospective time as they string together pieces of memories into a cohesive understanding of their lives. While they communicate through entirely different mediums, a comic book versus a series of poems, both texts mimic the workings of the human memory works and show how humans perceive time.

In A Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline reflects on events by recalling snippets of memory that have preceded such circumstances. By intermittently relating moments of the past to current events, Jacqueline suggests that history actively shapes life that comes after. She provides us with an image of her grandparent’s experiences that “run like rivers through [her] her veins” (Woodson 2). Jacqueline’s assertion that our actions and thoughts are partly preconditioned by past events incites an examination of the human memory. Why does our brain want us to remember certain situations rather than others? Why do these memories surface in midst of relatable situations?

The graphic novel, Fun home reflects on the workings of the human memory by presenting Alison’s life through a compilation of memory snippets. Alison does not follow chronological order; she presents scenes from her childhood and young adult hood as they appear relevant to the topic. For instance, when she recounts her father’s death she flashes back to her childhood and describes her experience with her father in the funeral home then she flashes forward to her teenage self-standing in front of his grave. This back and forth through time imitates the way our minds think about the past. When we are currently facing a situation, our mind seems to pull all the relevant memories regardless of their time of occurrence. Bechdel mimics the flood of memories we often experience by stringing together a multitude of memories.

Bechdel further mimics the stream of memory we experience, but providing illustrations of each scene. Unlike A Brown Girl Dreaming, Fun Home is a graphic novel that narrates through both words and pictures. This medium resembles the way that the human memory stores both images and communication from the past. While the mind also combines olfactory, gustatory, and tactile senses to construct more vivid memories, the graphic novel at least succeeds in utilizing visual and auditory senses to make Alison’s reflections of the past more vivid. Bechel uses images to show that senses play a large role in the way that human’s experiences and remember time.

Bechdel, Fun Home

A time that created much wonder for me was when my grandfather passed March 12, 2016. It was a very confusing time and the first time I ever realized how close death really was. I realized in that moment that death could truly happen to anyone, even those you think are the most invincible. At this moment I was a freshman in college, beginning to truly feel what it means to be an adult and to conduct myself in a professional manner. I had always looked to my grandfather a retired military man for this guidance because he knows first hand what it means to stand upright, shoulders back and to show confidence and professionalism even if one was to not truly possess these qualities. Everyday I went to visit him before his death, I tried to prevent it. I always asked the nurse what was going on an what they were doing to treat his cancer. No one told me it was as bad as it was, not even my grandfather. I didn't know that he was previously diagnosed with cancer, but survived and the cancer came back.

My family was never a family to discuss personal matters, it was taboo. Talking about someone having cancer or even dying was against my family's norms. In this moment, I realized I wanted this to change. I didn't to continue to keep sensitive matters in the dark. I wanted my family to be open and honest about everything, but I soon realized the way in which my grandparents were raised and the times that they were raised it. You weren't allowed to speak on sensitive matters. You weren't even allowed to question authority. It was the idea of "be seen and not heard." Thats what I call it. You were allowed to be seen, but not heard. If you were to talk back even in a polite manner, it  is considered disrespect and to this very day, my grandmother still considers this to be so.

 I decided to convert to Catholicism, which for a baptist/protestant family, this was a crime against the family. Even to this day, a black Catholic is rare and basically unheard of. If you are black, you are expected to be a protestant democrat, no if, ands, or buts, about it. Going outside of this norm is treacherous and causes many problems. I have struggled to get people to understand many of the reasons I chose to worship in this way. I think it goes back to my traditional family values. It was the first time in which I was able to be heard and be seen through my religion and it was the first time, I was able to look back on my childhood and my relationships with my family members, especially my grandparents and understand that it was not their doing themselves, but it was more of their upbringing and the idea that authority was not meant to be challenged. They were taught to understand this and although, I was taught in the very same way, my new faith allowed me to change these beliefs and follow a new set of ethics that embodied respect in a completely different way.

Like Alison Bechdel, I struggled with my identity. I struggled to understand it and even just went with it until there was a death of someone very close to me and then I began to see the world in a different lens I began to want to seek answers and the truth of what was once considered taboo. In the first chapter of the novel, Allison makes a point that her father Bruce tries to make her family seem pretty on the outside even though it is dysfunctional in the inside. Relating to this, I think this was the key behind "be seen and not heard." One is to not voice hoe dysfunctional things are within a family because it makes the family look bad and the one thing that is key is a family's reputation. If a family has a good reputation, they have everything basically. When a family looks dysfunction, this brings shame and makes the family look down upon. This was the idea that my family embodied. Allison's mother Helen makes it a point to thus tell the children that they are to not discuss their dad's appearance. These little nuances are what created secrecy and begins to form conflict and turmoil within oneself and the family. I think this is why Allison has to search for answers because there are hidden family secrets that were once not talked about. I think when one is able to have an open and honest conversation with their family, a child is able to flourish better. A child is able to understand the world in a completely different context rather than looking at a world full of secrecy.

Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming

Jacqueline Woodson in her collection of poems, entitled Brown Girl Dreaming, provides the reader with vivid free verse poems that gives the reader a glimpse into a child's soul as she searches for her place in the world. Many of the free verse poems tell stories similar to those of the author, Woodson, who grew up in the 1960's and 70's in both the North and South; Brooklyn, New York and South Carolina respectively.

In the first part of her poetry entitled, "I am Born", she has a poem called Home. Like the rest of the poem in the book, this is a continuation of the last poem. The young girl has gotten off the bus with her family and has now arrived at her grandparents house. In this poem, the speaker describes her grandparents home. One the interesting aspects of the poem is that her grandparents home is not described in great detail and specificity. The poem reads, "A front porch swing thirsty for oil. A pot of Azaleas blooming. A pine tree." Her grandparents home could be located anywhere. These details are not specific to the speaker's grandparents home, but could more largely represent how her grandparents home is like any other child's grandparent's home. It is just the basic things that one could see when they arrive at any home; a tree, some flowers and a front porch, nothing very fancy or even special. I think this is apart of the Woodson's agenda to indicate to the reader that all people can relate to this basic setting, all people have this basic setting of a house. This is Woodson's way of saying we are all one in the same. There are basic things about us that make us all the same.

In part II of her collection of free verse poems entitled, "the stories of South Carolina Run Like Rivers," there is a poem which bring out her writing style which is very simplistic, but narrative where she paints a picture in the readers mind. She often uses long sentences with many commas equal to a stream-of-conscious writing style to give the reader many details of the 1960's and 70's were like for blacks. The speaker notes, "There are white men working at the printing press beside Daddy, their fingers blackened with ink so that at the end of the day, palms up, it is hard to tell who is white and who is not..." The speaker paints a very real image for the reader, but also makes it a point that the reader knows that the black man and the white man palms are indistinguishable when they are both working at the printing press. Again, alluding to the idea that the men are one in the same, meaning, they are all human and have the same human nature. The only difference is their race.

Hindsight bias

In Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel uses the reconstruction of memories to reinterpret specific events so that she can discover her father’s and her own homosexuality. As the narrator, Alison reconstructs her memories with pictures, letters, literature, diary entries, and dialogue. In forming her own sexuality and gender identity, she looks back upon her memories to reanalyze them with the knowledge of her father also being gay. As a result of hindsight bias, she understands events differently now than how she once regarded them before. She can extract details and patterns as she moves the narrative in a non-linear manner from one scene of her childhood to that of her young adulthood. Rather than writing events as a chain reaction, she provides snippets of scenes; consequently, the reader has to glean important revelations and details to connect as one main message. Her writing mimics the mental process that she would have undertaken as she recalled past events to determine hidden facts that were once indecipherable when they took place. She would have needed to delve into her own memories and murkydiary entries out of order to reevaluate herself and her dad under their newly revealed discoveries. After tracing through random memories, she could draw from them a complete meaning to her life and identity in tandem with her father’s.

            By running through both of their lives simultaneously, she demonstrates the changing times. During her time period, she is able to embrace her sexuality in a supportive community, whereas her father’s homosexuality remains covert until Alison comes out. Ultimately, they both come out at the same time even though her father has known that he is gay for years. However, Bruce does not even outright acknowledge his homosexuality, for it is his wife that reveal the affairs and confides in Alison. Therefore, Alison declares that “I shouldn’t pretend to know what my father was…perhaps my eagerness to claim him as “gay” in the way I am “gay,” as opposed to bisexual or some other category, is just a way of keeping him to myself” (230). As a result of their shared identity, Alison connects with her father toward the end of his life. Thus, she attempts to compare their situations, yet, as she connects all the pieces, she realizes that they are not completely comparable. They grew up in different times; Bruce could not fully embrace himself because he struggled with shame. In essence, their shared homosexuality allows them to have bonding time, but their dissimilar experiences create a chasm and leads them to very different endings, where one ends in a lie and the other begins in a truth.

Fun Home: Reflection

Colin Hayes

EN.387.01

Dr. Juniper Ellis

27 March 2018

Fun Home

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, while rather tragic and morbid, promotes ideas that are quite universal to humans as we reflect on times of the past. Much of her tragicomic graphic novel contemplates how her father’s death as well as his time alive influenced her, and made her think deeply about the events surrounding her adolescence and coming of age. Although not confirmed, Bechdel believes her father committed suicide as a result of his shame and embarrassment from his closeted life outside of the Bechdel family. Bechdel’s narrative presents the all too common occurrence of learning through reflection. In her present moments Alison is often going through the motions, never able to stop and think about the emotional roller coaster that she calls life. It is not until she discovers her true self and begins to reflect on the events of her life that she truly begins to dissect her life and more importantly her relationship with her late father.

            Personally, I can directly relate to Alison’s experiences, not because I have lived through what she has, but based on the fact that I often have reflected on my past to reveal aspects of not only myself but those close to me as well. Reflection is a way of transporting yourself back in time to relive a moment. One might reflect to elicit feelings that they had in moments of ecstasy or to delve deeper into themselves so that they may learn. Either way, reflection is a way of leaving the present in order to relive the past and possibly make a change for the future. Through my almost eight years of Jesuit education I have been encouraged to reflect constantly, but to also live out St. Ignatius’ practice of living in the moment. Thankfully, Jesuit education has promoted a deep inner thought within me at a young age, something that Bechdel did not end up doing until she was older and had found herself. Reflections on the past have made me realize that I need to live in the present so that each moment can be lived to the fullest and not taken for granted. It does not necessarily have to be a moment of happiness, a moment of sorrow has the ability to teach just as effectively, if not better.