Fun Home is a autobiographical graphic novel, and it is also a coming-of-age story. Accordingly, there are a lot of themes in this work that echo other books we have read this semester: themes of self-expression, developing an identity, personal beliefs vs. societal expectations, sexual exploration, desire, guilt, control, and insecurity. You can write about Bechdel's talk on any of these themes and what she adds to the conversation.
One of the things that makes this work very different is the pictures. Bechdel is an artist, and she is doing a lot of interesting things with the images she presents, in writing as well as pictures. Notice some of her fine details, how she plays with light and shadow, what is in focus and what is sidelined in various pages, what is repeated, changed, etc.
Like many other writers, Bechdel seems to suggest that writing is an outlet for survival as well as expression. Like Ensler, she also uses a dark humor as a coping mechanism. Explore this in her tone and in her contradictions.
Like Nye, Bechdel looks to her father in order to understand herself. Throughout Fun Home, she reads her father's sexual identity as a mirror of her own (lots of images of mirrors throughout) just as Nye read her father's cultural identity as a mirror of her own. What might this suggest about the way that children use family as a springboard for their own self-expression and identity? How do these authors both embrace and reject their families? How so they learn from their experiences? Specifically, how does Bechdel write a different ending for herself than her father's and why is that so important?
