Wednesday, March 25, 2015
A Fraudulent Foundation
It's quite clear from the beginning of Fun Home that Bechdel's father lacks the confidence to be who he really is. His insecurities were most clear to me when one of Bechdel's brothers makes a comment about Bruce's tie over the breakfast table. He immediately runs upstairs to change it, despite the fact that they are running late (18-19). Bruce is so concerned with his outward appearance and how others perceive him and his life, that he creates a completely fraudulent world for himself. I believe it's this disconnection with the truth that prompts him to end his life. While in The Awakening, Edna commits suicide to avoid living a fictitious life, Bruce commits suicide to escape from the lies he so skillfully created. The constraints of living in a small town kept Bruce from discovering and embracing who he was. Instead, he kept his true self hidden, shunned it and constantly pushed it to the side, pretending to be someone he wasn't. The stress of this is evident in the way he interacts with his children. We see him punish Bechdel for a vase being close to the edge of a table. As she receives her punishment Bechdel exclaims, "But I didn't do anything!" (18). He can't handle his seemingly perfect world to be off in the slightest, because of a fear that the lies it was built on could easily come crashing down.
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Good observations, Morgan. Imagine the difficulty, the impossibility, of maintaining that kind of public illusion. Also, the family business of running a funeral home must surely have fed a morbid fascination with death in Alison's father, not to mention his reading of existentialist philosophers such as Camus.Indeed, illusions are fragile things that can easily come crashing down with devastating consequences.
ReplyDeleteYou're too right Charlie! The funeral home definitely helped created a dangerous fasination with death for Alison's father! We can witness this in the nonchalant way both Alison and her father interact with the dead body on page 44.
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