Fun Home (Chapter 6)

Alison, this time, takes the reader deeper into her life as the story progresses. In this chapter, Alison focuses on her deteriorating relationship with her mother as well as her own maturity process. Alison illustrates how she begins to feel both of her parents’ slip away from her. With both of her parents being focused on their own aspirations, Alison expresses how little they pay attention to her. Because she feels so isolated from her parents, she begins to form her own individual by being completely on her own. For example, when going to the football game, Alison dresses herself as boy for the sake of her comfort zone. She states, “Putting on the formal shirt with its studs and cufflinks was a nearly mystical pleasure, like finding myself fluent in a language I’d never been taught (182)”. By putting on clothes that she felt best suited her, she is now making her true self-aware to the pubic rather than just herself.

Alison also discovers that her father, because of his legal trial, is forced to go to counseling for six months. She believes that this is the invisible link to one of the many reasons that her father’s death was a suicide. At one point in the novel, Alison witnesses her father asking her mother if his psychiatrist can come to the house. Her mother immediately turned the idea away. Alison’s father rarely asked anything throughout the novel, especially toward his wife. The fact that his wife turned him away, could be a reason itself that he felt more alone than before.

When Alison finally decides to tell her mother about getting her period for the first time, her mother did not express any nurturing toward her daughter. Because both of Alison’s parents are so lost in their own worlds (her mother working on her play and her father going through legal agreements), she felt the need to look out for herself. Alison writes, “When I was ten, I was obsessed with making sure my diary entries bore no false witness (169)”. Any other young girl would first go to her mother when she begins maturing. But, because Alison does not have that strong intimate relationship with her mother, she began looking up words in the dictionary. This idea of Alison becoming more independent confirms the idea that Alison (even at her young age) did not need her parents as much, and she believed that they didn’t really need her. 

If Alison had a closer relationship with her parents, would her personality be any different? Did doing things on her own actually help her? Or hurt her (like her OCD)?

Chapter 4 & 5

In chapter 4 Allison goes into how at a young age she admired masculinity but not in a way that she admired it but wanted to emulate it. The comparison for which the chapter is about is this along with her father and his desire for  being effeminate. On page 90 the top comic strip is Alison kneeling down at the garden along side her father. She says she hates flowers and he father says, "Sprinkle in a little fertilizer, then put the bulb in pointy side up." Then after she calls him a sissy which she does throughout the chapter. This reveals to me that even though she has revealed her self to be a lesbian she in a strange way looks down on her father for being gay as well and not the typical manly father figure society would have wanted him to conform too. Later on Alison reveals that she would rather have a crew cut rather than a typical girly haircut after she got the nickname butch. These are both obvious that she wants to escape the ways she is being told to be which is effeminate. The comparison is explicitly shown on page 98 in the top drawing. Alison wrote, " Not only were we inverts. We were inversion of one and other." In the picture the mother is saying the fathers suit is effeminate and the father is saying how Allison needs some sort of straw hat. Meanwhile Alison wants to wear sneakers.  The father is trying to express his desire to be effeminate through his daughters attire. Perhaps the first time she expresses her desire to want to be a boy is on page 113 when her and her brothers are in the mine with the construction workers. The worker doesn't know she is a girl so she tells her brothers to call her Albert. This whole family dynamic is extremely odd and i would assume her father can see right through his daughter and knows she is trying to come out. 

Chapter 5 has a few meaningful themes in my opinion. One is that Alison feels her father would have still been living had they not lived in there small little town and the other is her development of OCD.  She says that because of him being forced to cover up who he truly was he was almost pushed into his suicide. Had he lived in New York City were he could have come out and lived a true life and have people accept him for who he truly was than he would be alive. This book is extremely sad and depressing listing to Alison talk about her father and all the issues it has caused her such as her development of OCD. She explains how she must count patterns on floor tiles and undress in the same manner or else she would have to get dressed again in order to take off the clothes in the right order. OCD can be very dangerous and it is very sad that she has it alongside her other issues. A young man from the town next to me just recently committed suicide because he couldn't handle his OCD anymore. 

Sam

Coming out

                In chapter 3, Alison completely exposes herself and her own personal struggles with her sexuality and her coming out to us readers.  She opens the chapter with telling us that “My father’s death was a queer business—queer in every sense of that multi-valent word.” (pg. 57)  She then highlights different definitions of the word queer that I found to be extremely interesting and true to her father’s characteristics.  These definitions were “At variance with what is usual or normal in character, appearance, or action; strange; suspicious”, “qualmish; faint”, “to thwart, ruin; to put (one) in a bad position;”, “counterfeit” (pg. 57) Her father was extremely suspicious and different with his actions and was definitely not normal.  She then tells us of her experience, four months earlier, about coming out to her parents.  While away at school, she sent them a letter.  Ironically, her parents were not as understanding about the news as she had hoped.  I found this to be ironic because her father had affairs with other men, and her mother had known about them.  Alison says, “I’d been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents’ tragedy” (pg.59).  This made Alison feel belittled in her biggest time in her life.  While she expected her parents to reciprocate some sort of support or empathy, she is relayed even more shocking news than she had given. 

                Alison also tells us of her father’s passion about the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  She tells us how her father saw himself in various characters and tells us of the bizarre parallels between the novel and her father.  She says, “Gatsby’s self-willed metamorphosis from farm boy to prince in many ways is identical to my father’s.” (pg. 63)  As we read earlier in the book, her father grew up on, and ventured into the farms near his house.  We have also read how he was the “prince” or ruler of their household.  She also tells us of how he even looked like the man who played Gatsby in the movie. 

                Alison also shares the downfall of her parent’s marriage.  She tells us that “They did not use terms of endearment” (pg.68). This must have been hard for Alison and her brothers to grow up around.  While she remembers two moments where her parents showed slight affection for each other, the rest of the memories were dark.  Her and her brothers would sit on the stairs and hear her parents fighting and sounds of crashing.  Rather than accepting that there was physical abuse going on the house, they would make excuses such as “Sounds like he knocked a stack of books off the desk.” (pg.69) I do not blame Alison and her brothers for doing this.  Growing up in an abusive household is extremely hard and can be detrimental on a child.  Rather than facing the truth, they would make excuses to not face reality.  By the end of the chapter, we find out that her parents divorced.  If her parents had divorced earlier, would Alison’s childhood have been any easier?

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

      In chapter two of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic we as a reader get a better understanding of Alison's fathers death. As Alison stated in chapter one, her and her father do not have a close relationship. When chapter two opens, it begins at her father's funeral. Everyone in her family is asking themselves if it was truly an accident or if he purposely walked in front of the truck. There is evidence on why some people think it is not an accident, and why some people do. "There's no proof, but there are some suggestive circumstances. The fact that my mother had asked him for a divorce two weeks before. The copy of Camus' a happy death that he'd been reading and leaving around the house in what might be construed as a deliberate manner"(27).

     Alison later talks about what they used to do at the "Fun Home." She talks about how her and her brothers always used to fool around. "My brothers and I had lots of chores at the fun home, but also many interesting opportunities for play"(37). Alison and her brothers often slept there with their grandmother. Grammy always would make sure all the bugs were killed before they went to sleep. In my opinion, it seems that Alison had a good and healthy relationship with her grandmother. It seems as if her grammy was always there when Alison needed her. Grammy also told them stories before bed. Alison's favorite is the one about how her father got stuck in the mud when he was three and how Mort saved him. 

    Alison talks about the time when her father called her back to the private room where the bodies where dressed and not yet put in a casket. That must be a hard sight to see being a teenage girl. She saw the person's genitals and his chest that was spilt open. The father didn't even have the decency to explain what he was doing, he just asked for the scissors near the sink. In this chapter, Alison states that she has a girlfriend yet she doesn't give us clarification if she truly is a lesbian or if this girl was just a friend. It is very clear at the end of chapter two that Alison wasn't very much effected that her father died. They clearly did not have a good relationship. "My brothers and I looked for as long as we sensed it was appropriate. If only they made smelling salts to induce grief-stircken swoons, rather than snap you out of them"(52). Do you think Alison was upset at all by the departing of her father?

In chapter one of "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic", written by Alison Bechdel, we learn about the relationship between Alison and her father when she was a child. She explains how her father is really into decorating and design of their gothic revival house in Pennsylvania, and she doesn’t have much of a relationship with her father whatsoever. Alison refers to her father as “a Daedalus of decor,” (p. 6) and she truly wishes he took as much energy he puts into decorating into showing affection towards her. She really only speaks to him when he asks her to help with decorating something around the house, so that vital father connection is not really there during her childhood. In the beginning, they have a couple minutes of fun together playing the airplane game, which every child usually experiences sometime in their life, but when they were done he loses interest and says, “This rug is filthy. Go get the vacuum cleaner.” (p.4) This makes Alison feel like her father doesn’t even enjoy or notice the times they spend together.

                Alison is also uncomfortable in her fathers’ presence because he gets angry very easily when something isn’t perfect. When they were setting up the Christmas tree, Alison’s brother was holding the tree, but the needles were sharp, so the tree fell. Her father got into a fighting stance and her brother shouts, “Don’t hit me!” (p. 11) This image portrays to the viewer that the father can be abusive at times to the children since they react this way towards him. Alison soon realizes that her father “used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they were not.” (p. 16) Knowing this, Alison recognizes that her father must have a secret if he’s trying this hard to be perfect, or reflect perfection. At the end of the chapter, we learn that her father commits suicide when she’s about twenty. Will Alison be scarred for life from the absence of her father’s love as a child?

-April Cust

Art Spiegelman “Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History” and “Mein Kampf” & Lynda Barry “Common Scents”

Unlike many of the other kinds of stories read, these three narratives are portrayed much differently. Spiegelman illustrates his story by telling of his memories from his lifetime. Spiegelman first looks back on his innocence he had during his childhood (as seen in “Mein Kampf), then jumps into a later time in his life when he suffered his most traumatic experience (as seen in “Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History”). In his first illustration, Artie remembers his own happy childhood and his pride for his son and daughter. It is seen thorough these pictures that he has a close bond with his son, Dash, as he indicates that his “parents died before I had any kids” (98). The story then jumps to “Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History”. After being in a mental hospital for three months, he returns with the news that his mother committed suicide. The guilt that he was the reason she killed herself begins to haunt him. Throughout the grieving of his mother, his father was the one to collapse rather than himself, saying, “I was expected to comfort HIM!” (101). Artie’s relationship with both his parents seemed to not be that strong, due to the guilt and isolation he feels between both of them. It is possible that due to the fact that he was in an insane institution for months, this strained his relationship with his parents. It is also possible that they are the reason that he ended up in the institution.

In Lynda Barry’s “Common Scents”, took a more humorous and unique twist into it’s own illustrations compared to Spiegelman’s. Instead of dwelling on a darkened past, Barry reminiscences on her past with contentment and happiness. Barry’s relationship with her family is expressed throughout the short story. Barry takes note of the differences in other people’s houses and wonders what “smell” her house has that is different. In a sense, Barry was trying to send out the message that even though every house has it’s own “scent”, it defines what makes that house their “home”. Just as Barry notices the little things that makes her family who they are, she notices the same in others’ households. Even though they are all different, the little things that are in a household make up their own homes. 

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Letter from Birmingham Jail was written by Martin Luther King Jr. during his time incarcerated for the nonviolent protests against segregation.  The Letter is written as a rebuttal to a public statement that was released by eight white religious leaders of the south. Kings letter is extremely long but has main points throughout which relate directly to human relationships between the white man and the African-American man. "We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;...". This quote right here is the main focus of why King writes this letter. He describes complete social injustice being struck down upon his  people by viscous lynchings  to inequality economically that have resulted in his people being poor and in the cycle of poverty. Clearly this is social and legal injustice as he claims it to be in his letter. But the beginning of the quote is about how other nations such as Africa and Asia are on a faster pace schedule to than the United States is to remove segregation and injustice to African Americans. It is almost unthinkable to be able to put my self back into this time period and be able to comprehend how normal it was to witness lynches of women and children just because of their race. This is not normal in todays modern thinking and accepting society because interacting with other humans has a moral code without color in the present day thanks to the work accomplished by King. I believe the most powerful line in the entire letter is the second to last. In it King says ,"If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me.If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me." This shows that even though King is fighting for what he believes in and ended up in jail for it, as well as watched thousands of people suffer under the racial injustice of the law written by the white government of the U.S, he still asks for forgiveness from the white men reading the letter and from god if he said anything that wasn't true. This shows how he interacts with people and with how he handles human relationships and interactions, which is with peace. 
- Sam