A Rhetorical Analysis of the Graphic Memoir Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

In the graphic memoir “Fun Home”, (which is contradicting considering she lived in a funeral home), written by Alison Bechdel, is focused on her out of the ordinary relationship with her father who is a closet homosexual and her personal struggles of trying to cope and understand her own lesbian sexuality. Her book is based around the devastating event of her father’s death, which she wonders if it was an accident or a suicide (most likely suicide), and how all these experiences have affected her life. To the public eye her family was portrayed as normal and typical, but behind closed doors they were a dysfunctional family.

At a young age Alison wanted to dress as a boy and was drawn to masculinity. She always felt as if she was trying to compensate for something unmanly in her father, and her father was trying to compensate for something feminine in her. The author’s objective is to show the audience her life experiences and to understand her struggles on making sense of her relationship with her father. For the readers to fully understand and to be drawn into her memoir, she provides not only texts and uses dark humor, but also imagery so the audience can visually put together what the author is portraying without saying it.

At the beginning of this graphic novel Alison immediately speaks about her father playing “airplane” with her. She goes into detail on how she puts her full weight on her father’s pivot point between his feet and her stomach, which is discomforting for Alison, since their relationship rarely had any physical contact, but states it was “worth the moment of perfect balance when I soared above him” (3). As she loses her balance and beings to fall, she compares this moment to the Greek mythology of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and melted his wings then plummeted from the sky to the sea. Except she is not comparing herself to Icarus, but her father. As she falls, then asks her father to play again, he begins to focus his attention on the rug and sends Alison to fetch the vacuum cleaner.

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She begins her memoir with this scene to make the audience feel and visualize how distant her relationship is with her father. She points out to the audience that physical contact with her father was a rarity and since it was so rare it was an uncomfortable feeling for her. She also makes it a point that her father’s attention was quickly drawn to anything except her. After this Alison speaks about how her father’s greatest achievements were restoring their old house and how “it was like being raised not by Jimmy but by Martha Stewart” (13). Here she uses humor to entertain the reader but also to give the audience an example of how insignificant she is to her father and what it's like to be raised by him. In conclusion of this brief section of the memoir, Alison uses imagery in this whole section as well as all her book to show the reader what she is trying to convey rather than saying it, or leaving things unsiad.

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