Essay 2 Draft

“We long for timelessness, we endure the passing of time: we suffer time. Time is suffering.”

Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time

Memory is how we as humans perceive time. As Bechdel takes us for a trip down her memories, we catch a glimpse of Her, Bechdel, the author not the character. Alison is a perception of Bechdel, an image of the author from a singular point of view. Bechdel is more than this singular point of view however. Bechdel uses Alison as a tool to dive into an introspection of her past, allowing the audience to literally put themselves in her shoes. In Fun Home, her father takes such a central role that any and all other influences on Bechdel’s life, such as her mother, are given no room. Because of this, Fun Home is not about real life Bechdel, but a Bechdel, however true to life, that is fictional. Bechdel uses Alison to, as Lemberg would describe it, “bear witness” to her past traumas. Lemberg rightly argues that Fun Home acts as a way for Bechdel to prove the validity of her experiences. However, as Bechdel is required to use Alison to tell her story, and as it is inherently from her point of view, true closure will only be found for Alison.

Throughout the memoir, Bechdel gives more detail to the background than the characters. On top of that, Alison is assigned much less visual detail than any of the other characters. The lack of detail in the character depictions allow the reader to place themselves in the story, and gives the memoir a much more intimate perspective. More importantly, the difference in detail between the characters and backgrounds creates a noticeable distinction that ebbs and flows with the plot. In the beginning of the memoir, Alison’s house is depicted with meticulous detail, sharp in contrast to the detail placed in the characters. Even within the context of the character drawings, Alison has considerably less detail than all of the other characters. The difference is particularly noticeable between her and her father, emphasizing the “otherness” and disparity Alison feels toward her father.  As Alison becomes older in the memoir, the relative difference in detail between the characters and background diminishes. This underlying trend comes to a climax on page 123, when Alison dreams of her father shortly before he dies.[DD1]  The dream takes place in a minimalistic forest, and the lack of detail placed in Alison’s father’s face comes into shocking contrast with the detail finally found in Alison’s face. The final panel of the dream sequence shows Bechdel and her father in silhouette, expressing their similarities and unity. The reversal of this trope signifies that Alison has come to fully realize her father’s queerness.

Memory is very subjective, and dreams are only more so. It is fitting that Alison fully realizes her father’s queerness in a dream. As Alison begins to come to terms with her father’s queerness, we realize that her trauma is too complex and multi-faceted to be merely “validated” as argued by Lemberg. The fact that Bechdel is forced to revisit her story through the fixed-point perspective of memory means that only Alison, the Bechdel of the past, finds closure. This turning point where Alison’s closure is foreshadowed is given an ethereal quality, a timelessness lent by it’s dream state. The rest of the panels are based off of memory and supplemented by pictures and notes, giving an abstractly linear direction of the time through the memoir. Just as we have all of our memories in a jumble in our heads at once, but can place each memory linearly in time as we recall it, when Bechdel places her memories into Fun Home, we unconsciously organize them into a linear story, resulting in the “abstractly linear direction in time.” The main exception to this is when Alison achieves her closure in the memoir. The stunningly beautiful parallels drawn in the final pages of the memoir are only made possible through the seeds planted 105 pages earlier in her dream sequence. These two events put into perspective all of Bechdel’s memories. They act as a timeless backbone that underlies all of the events of the memoir. The paradox of the most subjective event in the memoir acting as the backbone of the memoir only further emphasizes how truly complicated Bechdel’s  trauma is, and how closure for a single aspect of her is not closure for all of her.

Fun Home is a beautiful graphic memoir that expertly encapsulates the traumas of Bechdel and her experience of coming out. The parallels between her and her dad only highlight their differences, portraying Alison as the version of Icarus that never crashed, the version that had the trials and errors of the previous Icarus to guide her. Ultimately, Fun Home was never about Bechdel or Alison, but about the relationship between them and her father. The story portrayed is a biography between the lines, a tale derived from the combined experiences of two outcasts. The memoir does not have an personal agenda, Bechdel is not looking for personal gain or validation through writing this. This memoir is simply an ode to the complexity of a single relationship. The importance of differentiating between Alison, the relationship, and Bechdel, the person, is vital in appreciating the emotional value behind the graphic memoir. One is the displaying of an emotional crux, a beautifully tangled story. The other is a story where the author is the protagonist, one where the focus is on a tale of redemption and validation. I don’t need to point out which viewpoint does Fun Home justice.

Sources:

Lemberg, Jennifer. “Closing the Gap in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1–2, 2008, pp. 129–140, 10.1353/wsq.0.0051. Accessed 16 Aug. 2019.

Chute, Hillary. “Gothic Revival.” Villagevoice.Com, 2017, www.villagevoice.com/2006/07/04/gothic-revival-2/. Accessed 30 Sept. 2019.

Thurman, Judith. “Drawn from Life.” The New Yorker, 2018, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/23/drawn-from-life. Accessed 30 Sept. 2019.