Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: Plot and Significance of Title

Post by Jaymee F

                                                         Plot
Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home recounts what it was like growing up in a world heavily influenced by her father. Bechdel reflects on familial relationships, primarily focusing on the complex father-daughter bond she shared with Bruce. Fun Home depicts various stages of grief after Bruce’s passing, suggesting that he took his own life. It is only when Alison acknowledges her sexuality as a lesbian, that she can conclude that her father had been keeping his own homosexuality a secret.

Chapter by Chapter

Ch. 1 - Old Father, Old Artificer

Alison introduces us to her life inside the immaculate Bechdel home. Chapter 1 begins with the fondness of the occasional father/daughter airplane ride. The moment gets interrupted by Bruce demanding the rug get cleaned.

To an outside eye, the Bechdel home could be considered a mansion, but Al goes into the history of how, through scavenging, the Bechdel home comes to be like an immaculate museum. Bruce is introduced as obsessive about appearance, cleanliness, and order, and always working on a new renovation project. We begin to view Bruce as the man, and boss, of the house, ordering everyone to help with his projects. Bechdel’s first literary reference compares Bruce to Icarus “…design[ing] the famous labyrinth” (p. 7). Bechdel’s use of comedy is introduced in the “tough titty” (p. 7) comic, also establishing Bruce’s strong-minded personality as he forces a stereotyped feminine décor for Al’s bedroom, against her will. Bechdel goes into the history of how the “gothic revival house” (p. 8), came to be in the tiny little town of Beech Creek, Pennsylvania. Bruce continues extreme renovations on the Bechdel home while exuding manic behaviour towards the family. 

Al considers the possibility of Bruce’s homosexuality while discussing her father’s obsession with appearance and perfection as well as his novel, “The Nude Book”, showcasing a shirtless man as depicted on p. 15. 

Bechdel admits Bruce’s secret, acknowledging her father had sex with teenage boys, while still viewing her family as a “real family” (p. 17). Bechdel continues to depict the necessity of walking on eggshells around Bruce, as his behaviour was unpredictable and out of control. Despite his outbursts, Al shares some very fond memories between herself and her father including bedtime stories, the purple metal cup waterfalls at bath time, and tractor rides. Chapter 1 concludes by comparing the feeling after Bruce’s suicide, to the feeling of loneliness while he was still alive. Al concludes, “But I ached as if he were already gone” (p. 23).

Ch. 2 - A Happy Death 

Bechdel considers her father’s death as a probable suicide despite there not actually being any physical proof (p. 27). Alison reflects on various literary works including Camus’ A Happy Death, considering whether or not Bruce’s literature interests were a “sign of desperation…” (p. 28). Bechdel discusses Bruce’s fixation on the obelisk while referencing his closeted homosexuality. We learn of Bruce’s “reluctance to stray…” (p. 31), as most Bechdel relatives grew up and never moved from their tiny little hometown of Beech Creek. Helen encourages the children to not make that same mistake (p. 31).

We return to the time of Helen’s pregnancy with Alison. At the time, Helen and Bruce were living in West Germany when they got a call about returning to run the family-owned funeral parlour after grandfather had a heart attack. Alison introduces us to the “gothic revival house” (p. 34), later deemed the “Fun Home” all the while comparing the Bechdel's to The Addams Family. We learn more about the family business and the children’s casual attitude towards death. Alison ponders the day Bruce needed her help in passing him a pair of scissors over the naked body of a man bearing an enormous split in his chest. 

Was he testing her? Alison discusses the suppression of her emotions, even amidst Bruce’s death and at his funeral.

Ch. 3 - That Old Catastrophe 

We open on an exploration of the term "queer". Bechdel comes out to her parents four months prior to Bruce’s death. Later, we learn that Alison feels her coming out could possibly have encouraged Bruce’s suicide.

After announcing her sexuality as a lesbian, Helen tells Al that Bruce has had affairs with men. Alison considers Bruce’s immaculate and elaborate library, and his relationships with younger men, concluding that her father was a closeted homosexual. Al establishes various literary comparisons, including Bruce seeing himself in the various characters of Fitzgerald’s stories. Bruce and Helen have no grandiose story on how they met, they didn’t use terms of endearment and often screamed at one another. Al admits that seeing any physical gesture between her parents was basically non-existent.

Finally, we learn Helen and Bruce met during a college production of Taming of the Shrew, where Helen was the lead and Bruce was in the ensemble. Al talks about Helen’s luminous face fading eight years into her marriage to Bruce. Al skips to her self-discovery as a lesbian, coming across the revelation in a book at nineteen. Al first learnt the term at age thirteen. Al continues her self-sexuality research through college, studying as much literature as she can on the subject. Al comes out to her parents via letter. Bruce acknowledges her honesty, while Helen refuses to come to the phone. Helen sends Al a letter of disapproval which devastates her. 

After responding to the hurtful letter line by line, Al learns about many of Bruce’s secret affairs including one with the children’s babysitter, Roy. We are introduced to Al’s world at college, where she meets her lover Joan, and becomes involved in a “…political and sexual awakening” (p. 81). After Joan and Al move in together, Helen calls to say that she and Bruce are getting a divorce. Two weeks after that, Al gets the call to say that Bruce is dead. After the funeral, Helen started getting rid of most of Bruce’s library. Joan writes a poem about the event. Al establishes that Bruce’s literature obsession stems from, “The preference of a fiction to reality” (p. 85), just like Gatsby. Al compares the tragic ending of Fitzgerald’s books, to Bruce’s own tragic demise. 

Ch. 4 - In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

Bechdel introduces the chapter by considering Bruce’s love of flowers and gardening. Bruce would find young men to help with yard work and to babysit, in turn, it was, “…young, often straight, men with whom he fell in love” (p. 94), this included Roy. Alison acknowledges her admiration for the masculine charm of these men, discussing her infatuation with masculinity, and comparing this image to her father. Al felt she needed to compensate for something missing in Bruce, just as he did with her. 

Al discovers a sexual photo of 17-year-old Roy, taken by Bruce on a trip to Jersey Shore. The Bechdel children had accompanied them when Al was only eight, while Helen was away on a trip of her own. On the way home, they stop in New York City to pick up Helen. New York symbolizes Bruce and Helen’s young-adulthood life together and foreshadows Alison’s city of study for college. Al discusses the village in the early eighties. Proust is then referenced, defining the original title of volume two (once translated) as the title of this chapter. Speaking of flowers and budding, Alison references the beginning stages of puberty and tender breasts. A few years after Roy, a man named Bill has taken over as Bruce’s helper. Again, without Helen, they leave for a camping trip at the Bechdel’s deer camp ‘The Bullpen’. Al, then ten, sees her first sexualized naked calendar girl. 

During a day trip to the strip mine, a second calendar girl makes Al blush. She then urges her brothers to call her ‘Albert’, so the tour man won’t know she’s a girl. Bill shows the Bechdel children how to shoot, they later encounter a huge snake at the spring. Al brings the reader back to the present, considering whether or not her father could have possibly seen something in the bushes that could have scared him enough to jump onto the road by accident. 

Al Includes, “And in a way, you could say that my father’s end was my beginning” (p. 117).

Bechdel sees her first “bulldyke” and sees similarities within herself. In the same box where Al found the photo of Roy, there is a photo of Bruce wearing a woman’s bathing suit. In it, he looks poised, not silly. The chapter closes with a comparison between a photo of Bruce and a photo of Al, both depicting happiness, with their lovers behind the camera.

Ch. 5 – The Canary-Colored Caravan of Death

Two evenings before Bruce’s death, Al dreams that they’re together watching the sunset at the Bullpen. Al talks of her “numbness” (p. 125) at Bruce’s funeral and how she couldn’t really say what she actually thought. Al poses if Bruce had moved from Beech Creek and abandoned small-town life, his story may not have ended up the way it did. 

We consider the geographical location of Beech Creek. Al talks about her art inspirations even from a young age, including writing poems, being inspired by nature, painting and more. Helen’s talents as an actress are referenced; Helen was also a beautiful pianist. Al considers the possibility of her mother sharing an intimate relationship with another man. After Bruce’s passing, Helen is recording lines on an old tape recorder when she realizes she had been taping over Bruce’s voice. Looking back, Al thinks of the Bechdel home as an “artists’ colony” (p. 134), where everyone was home together under one roof, but everyone was isolated in their own creativity. Al’s obsessive-compulsive disorder started when she was ten. 

She examines various moments where OCD overtook her, including counting odd vs. even numbers, wearing only certain clothes on specific days of the week, and more. Al diagnoses herself based on readings on compulsion in one of her mother’s health pamphlets. Al starts a diary during this “obsessive-compulsive spell” (p. 140). Making daily entries, eventually, she starts to write “I think”(p. 141) between comments. She writes it so often she soon turns it into a symbol, then fills her pages with that symbol, writing it directly over “…names and pronouns…” (p. 142), as a way to protect against evil. Al compares life in Beech Creek and its map to that of Wind in the Willows. 

After a terrible 3-person accident, Al’s penmanship becomes almost completely illegible due to emotional distress. Helen takes over on writing for Al until her writing improves. Through daily words of self-encouragement, Al’s OCD improves but her anxiety lingers. She’s become obsessed with giving up her behaviours.

Ch. 6 - The Ideal Husband

Bruce’s secret almost comes to the surface as he admits he is going to see a psychiatrist. Helen is prepping for her role in an upcoming production of Importance of Being Earnest, and Al helps her run lines. Summer holidays bring on a plague of locusts in Beech Creek, and Al gets her period which she hides from her mother. 

The Bechdel children go to the Gryglewicz house for a few days where they play various made-up games. While the kids are gone, Bruce gets into trouble with a pair of brothers, Mark and Dave. One June evening, Bruce picked up the younger brother Mark and bought him beer which he drank despite being underage. When Bruce dropped Mark off at home, the older brother Dave called the police. Al considers the psychiatrist visits were a recommendation made by Bruce’s lawyer.

Helen is writing a thesis, revising it, and seeing a thesis advisor. In preparation, leading up to the opening night, the Gryglewiczs drop off a beautiful bouquet for Helen. Later, Al discovers the couple had once proposed group sex to Bruce and Helen. Al becomes obsessed with writing entirely honest diary entries and realizes she can draw out her own erotic fantasies and innocently discovers masturbation. Helen shares news that the family may be forced to move if Bruce loses his job for buying beer for the minor. Al suggests Bruce and the brothers were involved in something sexual, and that the underage beer purchase was the least of his troubles. Helen’s thesis is due when a terrible storm targets the Bechdel house, resulting in multiple trees toppling over on the property. 

Helen’s paper falls subject to the elements, forcing her to retype it that evening. Al suggests the storm eerily targeted only the Bechdel property. Bruce has his court hearing, and charges are dismissed mandating completion of counselling for six months. The Bechdel's do not have to move as Bruce does not lose his job. Al has her fourteenth birthday, and together with her best friend Beth Gryglewicz, they dress up in some of Bruce’s old clothes while portraying two con men. After therapy sessions, Helen claims Bruce returns home in manic moods, including wanting to invite his counsellor over for dinner. Al considers the possibility of the two men being more than just client and counsellor. Al finally tells her mother in December that she’d gotten her period, which Helen accepts awkwardly.

Ch. 7 - The Antihero’s Journey

Our final chapter begins with a trip to New York with the Bechdel children and Bruce. Al is now fifteen so experiences the city in a new, gay light. John wanders off, which sends Bruce into a panic. John, then eleven, had noticed a man watching him, so he returns to Elly’s where they’re staying. Al talks about the ballet, a visit with a gay couple, and seeing A Chorus Line. Al talks about an evening where Bruce was getting ready to head out for a drink, encouraging the kids to go to bed. Al considers what Bruce’s life would have been like if he hadn’t passed in the ’80s. She admits, with his promiscuity and the aids epidemic being rampant, he probably wouldn’t have made it very long, possibly taking Helen with him. 

Al talks about purpose of the memoir, which is to share her father’s story. Bringing the reader into the present, Al considers the issue of claiming Bruce as a victim of homophobia, making it harder to blame him. She acknowledges if he had come out earlier in life, she and her brothers wouldn’t be here. Al reflects on years of neglect as a small child, establishing that Bruce had no use for the kids until they were older and capable of possible intellectual companionship. Al and Bruce share an intellectual bond as he encourages her, “You’re the only one in the class worth teaching” (p. 199). As she responds, “It’s the only class I have worth taking” (p. 199). 

Al goes off to college where their bond blossoms further, books serving as their primary form of exchange. Through studies and books as recommended by Bruce and for class, Al discovers she is a lesbian and finds as much literature on the subject of sexuality as possible, putting her literature course on the back-burner. Al continues her sexual awakening through books and masturbation, and by joining LGBTQ and feminist school groups. Al meets her then-lover Joan, a poet and activist. Al comes out to friends and to her parents. Bruce acknowledges her honesty, while Helen waits a few weeks to process the information, preferring that she’d keep her options open. On a visit home, Helen opens up to Al about some of Bruce’s secrets, including his affairs with men, once contracting body lice, and shoplifting. While home, Al and Bruce finally share some alone time while polishing silver and going to the movies. In the car, Al confronts Bruce about whether or not he’d meant to suggest the Colette book, encouraging her to acknowledge her sexual identity. He in turn, essentially admits it was a guess and details a few of his own homosexual experiences. He reflects on a past desire to be a girl and how he wanted to dress up in girl’s clothes. 

After the movie, Bruce tries to take Al to a gay bar but she is underage so plans change. Back at college, the letters and phone calls continue between Al and Bruce. At the end of the semester, Joan comes home with Al for a Bechdel family visit. This is the final time Al sees Bruce. At the time of Bruce’s death, Al claims, “…we were close, but not close enough” (p. 225). Al comes to terms with various stages of grief following Bruce’s death, essentially admitting that life pretty much went right back to normal. Al references a letter in which Bruce comes out but doesn’t come out to her. Fun Home concludes with a literary comparison between Icarus hurling himself into the sea. 

Bruce instead, hurled himself in front of the Sunbeam bread truck, but he had been there for Al when she needed him.

For further examination and perspective on the plot of Fun Home, please view Matt Draper’s summation via video:

Significance of Title

The significance behind Bechdel’s title Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is explained in her comparison between the Bechdel’s and The Addams Family. She writes, “The lamp next to [Wednesday Addams] looked just like my lamp. In fact, the girl looked just like me” (p.35). Al compares her mother to Morticia Addams and depicts the common occurrence of a bat swooping into the home come nightfall (p.35).         

The home itself was a “rented federal-style farmhouse” (p.33) illustrated to resemble one of those old mansions inhabited by Casper the Friendly Ghost. Alison continues to describe the home as, “the gothic revival house” (p.34). 

Alison explains her father’s role as a funeral director and the embalming process of the deceased. She writes, “But what gave the comparison real weight was the family business...and the cavalier attitude which, inevitably, we came to take toward it” (P. 35). 

The “Fun Home” is what the Bechdel children called their home as a result of their out-of-the-ordinary upbringing (p.36).

References

Bechdel, A. Fun Home. (2006). Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company. 

Draper, M. (2018, January 25). Fun Home - Facing The Past Through Fiction [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/-NGVMR3FZGA

Post created by Jaymee