Sunday, November 16, 2014

Fun Home

In the excerpt from Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, is a great example of how graphic novels can be worthy of literary praise. Bechdel takes the idea of a comic elsewhere (in the vein of others, such as Ghost World), and both her images and words are equally impactful. Throughout the piece, she builds the image of a father who is detached. Through her words, as well as her drawings of him; face bland and unoccupied. Each frame is sullen face after sullen face. The passage that especially stuck out to me was the last page, where she writes: "It's true that he didn't kill himself until I was almost twenty. But his absence resonated retro-actively, echoing back through all the time I knew him" (4021). That line just felt so powerful, yet sad, coming to a realization that your father has been absent throughout your life. The worst part is it not being physically absent, but mentally. When she says she ached like he was dead before he died, you see just how isolated he is emotionally from his family.

Having a graphic novel was a nice change of pace!

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