The Audience of Fun Home


    It’s a complex read, not only in its references and word choice but also in its themes. I almost felt like I wasn’t qualified to read this novel -- I hadn’t had enough English classes or read enough classic novels to truly understand the message Bechdel was trying to send. I felt ostracized as a reader and silly for even attempting to understand the novel. In a book where so much is open-ended and up for interpretation, I struggled to even understand the facts laid out on the page.

    While reading, I found myself often wondering who this novel was written for. So many popular coming-of-age stories have a clear sequence of events with an ending where the conflicts in the story are resolved. It not only allows readers to identify with a character but also to see that character get a happy ending. Fun Home doesn’t have a linear sequence of events and has no real conclusion. It seems like it’s written less with the audience in mind and more to help the author work through the things that have happened in her own life. In both of the previous books, I could relate to things the characters did or said, but with Fun Home, I felt like an outside observer. Bechdel did not offer any real conclusion for her story and even after using this book as a tool to reflect, she doesn’t have a real answer for everything that’s happened to her.

    My lack of understanding of Fun Home made me feel as if I was not the target audience. With all of Bechdel’s complex language and references, it seems like she was writing this book for herself as a way to try and understand her life story. Maybe it’s a bit self-centered to think that because I didn’t understand a story no one did, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that Bechdel doesn’t even fully understand her story and is seeking to understand it in the same way we are. In that way, she seems to be writing for herself more than another reader.

Comments

  1. FarahApril 9, 2021 at 9:52 AM

    I definitely agree that the book probably would have resonated with me more if I had actually read more of the books that are referenced in this novel, just like you said. I like your idea that the book kind of served as Allison's diary where she can get down her thoughts and try to sort them out from there. In the same way that a diary contains hidden references or half-finished thoughts, Fun Home has many references to events or books that probably mean a lot more to Alison than they ever could to us. Like you pointed out, Fun Home has no nice conclusion or answers, but I think it's really interesting to see Alison work through her own story, and the fact that she can't find any concrete answers feels very realistic to me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ElijahApril 29, 2021 at 5:59 PM

    Yeah I completely agree! Many times reading the novel I didn't really understand what she was talking about or what she was referencing. She seems very well-read, and readers could definitely have a better understanding of who she is and what she's saying by reading the things she references.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Aryan LalwaniApril 29, 2021 at 11:41 PM

    I absolutely agree that Fun Home felt like it was written for a very niche demographic - perhaps a literature savvy creative-minded teen. However, I don't think this target audience takes away from the experience of reading Fun Home as someone who doesn't really fit those traits, it arguably enhances it. Being able to picture myself in Bechdel's shoes with a completely different perspective than hers led me to be even more invested in her coming of age journey.

    ReplyDelete
  4. RowanMay 1, 2021 at 9:45 AM

    I agree with what you say about how the book seems like it's meant for Allison to work out her own issues. While it is technically written to be readable for people who don't know her or her family like explaining who everyone is and stuff, everything about it is so deeply personal and specific to her family, like the books that they read or even the plays that they watched together. It does sort of feel like the book exists more for the author than for any specific audience or anyone outside of the events that she is processing.

    ReplyDelete
  5. SerenityMay 4, 2021 at 4:13 PM

    I completely agree with this assessment and I was having a lot of the same thoughts as you when reading this book. It felt really pretentious to me, but it was also really confusing because it's a graphic novel so it shouldn't be. I also totally agree that she was writing for the catharsis and closure rather than to make it a traditional story with a target audience.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coming-of-age: My Girl edition

       My Girl (1991) takes us on a journey in the ever-changing life of eleven-year-old Vada Sultenfuss. Her mother died when she was born and her father runs a funeral home, giving her a strange and obsessive relationship with death. Her father often neglects Vada, and her feelings of isolation from her father only increase when he finds love with a cosmetologist, Shelly. Her best friend, Thomas J, the only one who truly understands her, dies, leaving her to deal with her struggles alone. My Girl is a heart wrenching account of both the beauty and pain of growing up, exemplified through Vada’s story of loss and growth. Throughout the movie, we see Vada experience lots of traditional events that symbolize her aging. She has her first kiss with Thomas J, and for the first time in the movie, her aloof attitude towards what boys think about her starts to change. She gains a heightened awareness of what boys think of her and her desire to be pretty in their eyes com...
Read more

Benji the Outsider

               From the very beginning of the novel, we’re forced to recognize Benji’s identity as a driving force in his story. If I had four adjectives to describe Benji, I would say ex-twin, black, wealthy, and nerdy. All of these qualities make him an outsider to one group or another.             For all his life, Benji has had someone on his team. He can’t completely be an outcast with Reggie by his side. They were, as he puts it, “a matching set” (6). By the time the events of the novel start, however, they “ceased to be twins”. Benji no longer has an ally or companion. He has to work to form new relationships. Navigate the waters of coolness and popularity without his brother to fall back on if he needs support. We expect to see Benji not fitting in at school, but Sag Harbor was made for him. Surely he fits in there… right? “We fit in there” (7). This quote is coming at a time where...
Read more

Jason's Narration

The first week of classes, we discussed what coming-of-age meant. Was it a long drawn-out series of events, or one big moment in a person’s life that forever changes them? Was it a loss of innocence or the gaining of maturity? Coming-of-age stories can fit many different scenarios and span genres. So where does Jason’s story fit in to all of this? Much of Jason’s story revolves around the acceptance of himself intersected with the realization of the toxicity of the (masculine) social structures that surround him. To give us even more insight into his story, Jason narrates the entire book for us. The events seem so dramatized, which at first may seem like a writing fault, but show us exactly how Jason is feeling as a middle school boy. In class people suggested that the way the bullying was described was unrealistic or that some parts of the story seemed more magical than true to life. When I was first reading it, these mystical parts made it less coming-of-age to me. I wasn’t able to...
Read more