Notable Literary References in Fun Home

Post by Sarah H

It is impossible to read Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home, and not be struck by the rich profusion of literary references within the story. Many times, Alison Bechdel references and compares her family to the stories of esteemed authors, as well as tales of Greek mythology.
Alison Bechdel (2006) stated within her memoir, Fun Home, that, "I employ these allusions ... because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms,"(p. 66). These references help illuminate Bechdel’s childhood stories through comparisons to the literature and culture that young Alison was exposed to. It is especially apropos because Alison’s mother, Helen, was a drama major and an English teacher, and her father was also an English teacher. Bechdel’s application of Allusion adds additional illustrative quality to her pictorial storytelling. It allows the audience to see Alison’s story through the lens of these well-known fictional tales.

The Myth Of Daedalus and Icarus

Bechdel opens her memoir, in Chapter 1: Old Father, Old Artificer, by comparing her father to the myth of Daedalus and Icarus.

Bechdel is comparing her father to both Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus was a gifted craftsman and inventor who angered King Minos by creating a suit that would allow the Queen to mate with a bull (this is how the Minotaur was created). Later, in anger, King Minos banishes both Daedalus and his son Icarus to the labyrinth, which Daedalus has invented to forever trap the Minotaur. Daedalus is a creative genius and fashions wings to allow him and his son to fly out of their prison. Daedalus warns his son not to fly too close to the sun or else the wings will melt. Icarus doesn’t heed the warning, and he falls from the sky to his death ("Daedalus and Icarus Summary," 2019).
Bechdel is comparing her father, Bruce’s, fastidious talent for historical restoration, and his perfectionism, to Daedalus’ skills as a craftsman and an inventor.

Bruce used his skills for artifice to make things appear as they were not: perfect. Alison Bechdel juxtaposes her father’s talent for creating beautiful things to his secret homosexual relationships with teenage boys. Alison parallels this with Daedalus’ talents for invention; Daedalus is gifted, but he chose to utilize his gifts by inventing a suit to facilitate a deviant sexual relationship between a human and a bull.

Alison is also foreshadowing Bruce Bechdel’s fall from grace and his death to that of Daedalus’ son, Icarus. When Bruce’s carefully crafted world starts to crumble (his sexual preference begins to be exposed and his wife asked for a divorce), Alison believes he chooses to end his life by stepping in front of a moving truck.

Alison also compares her father’s rageful tempers to that of the half-human creature, the Minotaur. This allows a visual comparison to the monster that her father could become.

By comparing her father, and her childhood, to this Greek myth, Alison Bechdel adds layers to her story and engenders a deeper interpretation for her audience. In this chapter, Alison is setting the scene for the dynamics of her home life with her family, and more specifically, her father.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Throughout the memoir, Bechdel makes references to literature that directly relates to her family story. One of Bruce Bechdel’s favourite novels is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s novel is a tragedy about the unattainability of the “American Dream” (Wullick, 2019). Both Bechdel and Gatsby find that the pursuit of this dream is, ultimately, unfulfilling.
Bruce Bechdel is inspired by Fitzgerald’s biography during his courtship with Alison’s mother, Helen. After Bruce’s death, Alison observed parallels in the two men’s lives. She says, “Struck by the coincidence, I counted out their lifespans. The same number of months, the same number of weeks...but Fitzgerald lived three days longer” (Bechdel, 2006, p. 85).
Alison exposes to view the parallels between Gatsby and her father, Bruce. Gatsby, who seems to have attained the perfect life (money & wealth and social standing), more than anything desires the love of a woman from his past when he was still poor and humble. Similarly, Bruce seemingly has the perfect family and holds respectability in his community, but this is a facade; he is unable to live his life authentically as a gay man. Both Jay Gatsby and Bruce Bechdel die tragically.

A Happy Death and The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

 Camus’ books A Happy Death and The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, play prominent and important roles in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. Bechdel’s second chapter is entitled: A Happy Death. This is a reference to her father’s suicide. Camus was an existentialist who discusses the futility of life. He claims that we are all like Sisyphus, who spends his life in a meaningless task of pushing a rock up a hill, only to have it fall, and be forced to begin again. It is we who must imbue our lives with meaning and happiness ("Myth of Sisyphus," n.d.) When Bruce died, Alison says there was, “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” (Bechdel, 2006, p. 27). Alison also mentions that when she required a copy of The Myth of Sisyphus for a class she’d refused her father’s copy, which he had offered her (p. 47). Alison states that if her father had understood Camus’ intentions in his writing he would have known that Camus considered suicide illogical (p. 47).

Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Although Fun Home is mainly an exploration of Alison’s Bechdel’s childhood and adolescence and her relationship with her father, there are references to literature that help suss out her mother, Helen’s, character. Alison’s mother was an aspiring actress in New York before she met her father.


Like James’ protagonists, Helen has a troubled relationship with her husband and, during Alison’s childhood, there is little love left in their relationship. Helen also discovers that Bruce has been having homosexual affairs before, and during, their marriage. Below, Alison compares her parents’ marriage to Henry James’ a Portrait of a Lady:

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

Helen and Bruce Bechdel met in a production of Taming of the Shrew in college. Again, Alison demonstrates the way that Helen’s marriage to Bruce broke her spirit, much in the same way that Katherine’s spirit was eventually broken in Shakespeare’s play.
Bruce and Helen’s relationship is fraught with conflict, and this tension left an indelible mark on Alison and her siblings’ psyche.



Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
The book, Remembrance of Things Past, is a novel in seven volumes. Volume Two is entitled, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower ("Remembrance...," n.d.). It is a commentary on male and female adolescence, and it is the title of Chapter 4 in Fun Home. Proust’s book is one that Bruce began reading the year before he died. In this chapter, Alison states her dislike of her father’s passion for flowers. She thought it made him seem effeminate. She compensated for her father’s femininity by embracing all things masculine. In her adolescence, as she is beginning to recognize her sexuality, Alison begins to suspect that her father is gay.

Ulysses by James Joyce

There are several references to the works of James Joyce in Fun Home. Megan Tozer (2015) states:

For instance, the title of the first chapter, "Old Father, Old Artificer," is a line from Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man. The protagonist in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a craftsman named Dedalus, an obvious reference to the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, which Bechdel also employs as an extended allegory throughout the novel (para.2).

The last chapter of Fun Home is called The Anti-Hero’s Journey. This refers to James Joyce’s Ulysses, which is the story of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom (Tozer 2015, para. 3). Knowing that Ulysses was her “father’s favorite book of all time” (Bechdel, 2006, p. 203), Alison took an English class that focused solely on this book, partly as a way to understand her father better. She became more focused on lesbian literature and less able to concentrate on Joyce’s novel.



These are not an exhaustive list of Alison Bechdel’s references to literature in her graphic memoir, Fun Home. Hillary Chute (2006), states in an MFS Modern Fiction Studies journal article that, “Fun Home takes on as thematic and narrative filters Albert Camus' A Happy Death (the book Bruce Bechdel was reading when he died), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Henry James's Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady, Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning," Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and Colette's Earthly Paradise, among other literary references and allusions” (para. 2).

When speaking of her research, Bechdel says:

“I did all kinds of research. A lot of reading in particular...One whole strand of the book is my father's love of literature and the particular novels and authors that he liked. As I worked on the book I found this material creeping more and more into what I was writing. I was quoting Camus and Fitzgerald and eventually, I realized that the book was sort of organizing itself around different books or authors; each of the chapters has a different literary focus (as cited in Chute, 2006, para. 6).

Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is a memoir told through classic literary references and allusions as well as though her drawings. It is no wonder that the process took her seven years to complete.


Sources Consulted

Bechdel, A. (2006). Fun home: a family tragicomic. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Book Rags. (n.d.). Remembrance of Things Past Summary & Study Guide. Retrieved from http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-remembrance-of-things-past/#gsc.tab=0.

Chute, H.L., & Bechdel, A. (2006). An Interview with Alison Bechdel. MFS Modern Fiction Studies 52(4), 1004-1013. doi:10.1353/mfs.2007.0003.

Hendricks, C. (2017, March 21). Camus, the myth of Sisyphus. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xknevCV24Ak.

Movieclips. (2011, November 22). Gatsby is Murdered. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE4UQ5gh5Zo.

Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008, November 11). Daedalus and Icarus Summary. Retrieved from https://www.shmoop.com/daedalus-icarus/summary.html.

Sparknotes. (n.d.). Myth of Sisyphus. Retrieved from https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/sisyphus/summary/.

Toser, M. (2015, February 25). Fun Home James Joyce. Retrieved from https://www.gradesaver.com/fun-home/study-guide/james-joyce.

Wulick, A. (2018, March 17). Best Analysis: The American Dream in The Great Gatsby. Retrieved from https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-great-gatsby-american-dream.

Post Created by Sarah H